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THE IRISH HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NRW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCITTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE IRISH HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 



'THOUGHTS FOR A CONVENTION' 

BY 

GEORGE W. RUSSELL (A. E.) 
'A DEFENCE OF THE CONVENTION' 

BY 

THE RIGHT HON. 
SIR HORACE PLUNKETT 

AN AMERICAN OPINION 

BY 

JOHN QUINN 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1917 

All rights reserved 






COPTEIQHT, 1917, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1917. 



SEP 20 1917 






CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I An American's War Credo . . 3 

II Sinn Fein and the Dublin In- 
surrection 17 

III An English View of the Insur- 

rection AND Home Rule . 37 

IV The American Point of View . 52 
V Some Irish Opinions .... 59 

VI George W. Russell (A. E.) . . 79 
VII Sir Horace Plunkett ... 90 
Thoughts for a Convention ... 97 

Note 156 

Addendum 157 

A Defence of the Convention . .163 



AN AMERICAN OPINION 
By John Quinn 



THE IRISH HOME-RULE 
CONVENTION 

AN AMERICAN OPINION 
By John Quinn 



1AM glad to be one of a few million 
Americans who have neither changed 
their views nor found it expedient or poli- 
tic, because America has entered the war 
as one of the Allies, to change their views 
upon the war or its cause and the aims 
of the conspirators who began it or of 
the terms upon which it shall end. I 
have said, and written from the beginning 
of the war, that there could be no real 
peace with the Germans until the German 
philosophy, the German doctrine, the Ger- 
3 



4i The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

man practice and the German religion of 
might above right, of philosophized butch- 
ery, of the belief that wars pay, was not 
only knocked out of the heads of the Ger- 
man kaiser and the German general staflP 
and the German war party conspirators, 
but out of the heads of the German 
people themselves. Thanks to the Eng- 
lish blockade and now to our own em- 
bargo the pinch of hunger is being felt 
in Germany, but German militarism still 
flourishes and the organized butcheries 
continue still. Germany has always be- 
lieved and still believes in brute force. 
Now that her plans for world conquest in 
this war have miscarried, she is beginning 
to rely upon her organization for peace 
to get her own terms. Autocracy can not 
only make war better than democracy 
but it hopes to make peace better than 
democracy, for it relies upon bribery 
and the purchase and corruption of 



The Irkh Home-Rule Convention 5 

the purchasable and corruptible in every 
country. Germany knows that in these 
days nations fight as nations and that 
the armies on the fighting lines are but 
the advance guards of the greater armies 
that are entire nations. She had so or- 
ganized her national life that she could 
militarize all her resources and industries 
upon a moment's notice. She knew, 
and counted upon the fact, that Eng- 
land and France and Russia could not. 
But now France and England and Italy 
have organized themselves militarily. 
The United States is organizing herself 
militarily. When the United States shall 
have militarily mobilized not merely her 
fighting men but her vast resources, and 
shall have joined with France, England, 
Italy and Russia in the crusade to defeat 
German militarism, the combination will 
be irresistible. Germany knows this well. 
Hence her feverish desire for peace now. 



6 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

while she still has the war map to point 
to and to trade upon. 

Germany still is the child of " scientific 
barbarism." She had money, but the 
collapse of German credit is now evident 
to impartial economic experts. She is 
striving for peace, and her spies and pro- 
pagandists are working for peace in 
Russia and Scandinavia and Switzerland 
and Holland and the United States, with 
brazen impertinence, not because she has 
suffered a change of heart, not because 
she has come to disbelieve in the massacre 
of women, children and old men, not be- 
cause she has sickened of burning and de- 
stroying towns and villages, not because 
she has developed a new sense of justice 
and national honor, but because the ma- 
terial' resources and the military organi- 
zation upon which she relied are beginning 
to wear. The signs of the creaking of 
the machines are evident. Her rails and 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 7 

rolling stock must be wearing out, the 
fuel for her motors and submarines run- 
ning low, her supply of nitrates diminish- 
ing, her stores of wheat, copper, niclde, 
cotton and rubber going down, and the 
stored-up munitions, provisions and army 
supplies upon which she relied for quick 
victory becomng exhausted. It is written 
that they that take the sword shall perish 
with the sword. Germany has worshipped 
and still worships brute force and only by 
the force of the great democracies of the 
world may she be overcome. 

I do not believe, and I have never be- 
lieved, in the distinction attempted to be 
made between the German people and 
those who began and are carrying on the 
war. The German people, as well as the 
kaiser and his fellow-conspirators, be- 
lieved enthusiastically in war. For a 
hundred years wars had paid Germany. 
This war has been popular in Germany 



8 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

It has been carried on by the German 
people with all the zeal and ardour of 
religious fanatics. Its worst infamies 
have been defended and justified hy the 
German people. German atrocities in 
Belgium, Austrian atrocities in Serbia, 
the Lusitania infamy, the submarine pi- 
racy, were approved hy the German people 
generally. They were not merely ap- 
proved but were generally applauded and 
exulted in and defended hy the German 
people, by the press, by the publicists, by 
the professors, by the German Catholics, 
by the Jews, by the Socialists, by the lead- 
ers of all parties, by the great associations 
and corporations and by the whole na- 
tion. Certain German Catholic defenses 
both in Germany and the United States 
were particularly rancid and nauseating. 
The world has not forgotten the Ger- 
man cry DeutscMand iiher Alles or the 
German Hymn of Hate which was sung 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 9 

and rejoiced in bj men, women and chil- 
dren all over Germany. It was not alone 
the German officers or the general staff 
who were guilty of the revolting and bes- 
tial cruelties and destruction in Belgium 
and France. It may be said the atroci- 
ties in Belgium have ceased. But if one 
wishes to know whether Germany still be- 
lieves in frightfulness, one should read the 
pamphlet just published entitled Fright- 
fulness in Retreat (Hodder & Stoughton, 
London), which shows in seventy-six pages 
what the German soldiers of the retreating 
army in France have done. If after that 
there still remains any doubt in the mind of 
a candid reader, let him read The War on 
Hospital Ships, from the narratives of 
eye-witnesses, and the verdict on the Ger- 
man outrages expressed by the Interna- 
tional Red Cross Committee in Geneva, a 
body of the highest standing and most 
scrupulous impartiality, addressed to the 



10 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

German Government January 29, 1917. 
The deportation and forced labour of the 
Belgian civil population, the systematic 
exhaustion of the economic resources of 
occupied Belgium, the extinction of Bel- 
gian competition for the benefit of German 
industry, and the many and unspeakable 
outrages committed by Germans in occu- 
pied France and Belgium, all prove that 
the Germans as a people are stained with 
crime and infamy. An article in the 
Nineteenth Centufy for August, 1917, en- 
titled At War with the German People, by 
Brigadier-General F. G. Stone, C. M. G., 
demonstrates the utter absurdity of the 
claim that the Allies have no quarrel with 
the German people. 

Even in the United States, representa- 
tive Germans and representative German 
societies, with a few exceptions, have 
never openly condemned the German 
atrocities in Belgium or the Austrian 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 11 

atrocities in Serbia or the Lusitania in- 
famy or the innumerable other cases 
of German cruelty, perfidy and culculated 
barbarity. The many cowardly, detesta- 
ble and criminal German plots, conspira- 
cies and murderous outrages in this coun- 
try, both before and since the United 
States came into the war, have not been 
generally condemned or disapproved by 
representative Germans or leading German 
societies in this country. A German ma^*^ 
boast that " after the mar we shall organ- 
ize sympathy y'^ but the stain will endure. 

While the proof sheets of this book were 
being read the papers had long cable dis- 
patches regarding the reception in Ger- 
many of the President's reply to the Pope. 
The Frankfurter Zeitung said : *' To 
Wilson the Imperial Government is the 
merciless dictator of Germany but he him- 
self has to add that our nation is today at 
one with its Government." The socialist 



12 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

paper Vorwarts said: ^'The German people 
are -ftghting this most terrible of battles 
not for the rights of a single family or a 
certain form of Government, but for its 
own existence." The Frankfurter Zeit- 
wng is also quoted as saying : " In all 
essential points the German people is on£ 
with its Government, especially in the 
policy that directly preceded and that has 
been followed during the war." 

Something must have gone wrong with 
the German Government's bureau of news- 
control, for while some of the German edi- 
torials claim that Germany has already 
reformed itself, others claim that she is 
still to be reformed. For example, the 
Vossische Zeitung says : " The movement 
which Germany has created out of her 
very innermost is a genuine movement for 
liberty, and this path Germany has taken 
without advice from her foes and it does 
not lead to a sham democracy. The move- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 13 

ment respects the rights of a nation " (for 
instance, Belgium) " and opposes every 
oppression of a people" (that is, Bel- 
gium and occupied France and Serbia). 
" This movement purposes also, by virtue 
of this self-determination, to teach nations 
to further neighbourly interests " (again 
Belgium, occupied France, Serbia, Ru- 
mania, Poland) " thus producing an hon- 
est league of the weaker nations, which col- 
lectively will be strong and free and cap- 
able of defending themselves " (including 
of course Belgium, occupied France, Ser- 
bia, Rumania and Poland). " This is the 
political aim which Germany has in view 
for herself and the European continent, 
and the achievement of which will be se- 
cured through parliamentarization." 

But according to Vorwdrts, the cre- 
ation and birth of the movement has not 
yet taken place. Vorwdrts says : " The 
only thing lacking is a Government re- 



14j The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

sponsible to the people's representatives 
as it exists in all other countries of the 
world," and " the German people are more 
than ripe for democratic government." 

While condemning the " inconceivably 
foolish proceedings of Zimmermann and 
other irritating incidents of the German- 
American conflict," the Munich Post says : 
" Have the democratic events of the last 
month, the rising of a new free and demo- 
cratic Germany, with a program of peace 
by agreement through international tri- 
bunals and the democratization of em- 
pires, completely escaped his (Wilson's) 
notice ? " But the Vienna Neue Freie 
Presse tops them all. It said : *' Even if 
it were assumed that Germany had striven 
after world domination, no one will under- 
stand why the slaughter must continue, 
despite the frustration of the alleged plan 
of domination." 

There are possibly some criminals in 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 15 

prison as equally devoid of humour as they 
are of decency and honour, who would not 
" understand " after they have been 
caught, tried, convicted and sent to prison, 
why the imprisonment " must continue, 
despite the frustration of the alleged 
plan " of the criminal. 

The Grerman sense of justice is shown 
by this paper's allusion to such things as 
the sinking of the Lusitania^ conspiracies 
to murder our citizens and to destroy 
property in the United States organized 
by German officers and agents and paid 
for by German money, the grotesque blun- 
dering of the German foreign office over 
Mexico and Japan, the slaughter of 
Americans on the high seas and such 
things as the cowardly murder by a Ger- 
man submarine of the sailors taken from 
the Belgian Prince, as " irritating inci- 
dents." International murder conspir- 
acies seem to these Germans to be " mere 



16 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

incidents." This leads one to wonder how 
many of those on the ship that, under safe 
conduct from Great Britain, carried the 
honourable and truthful BernstorfF and his 
official and unofficial German aides and 
agents back to Germany, were, from Bern- 
storfF down, morally and legally guilty of 
wholesale murder or conspiracy to murder 
or to destroy property or to incite strikes 
or to promote the cowardly crime of arson 
in the United States. While the scrupu- 
lous and truthful BernstorfF and his out- 
law crew have gone, conspiracies and plot- 
tings continue still. 

This may all seem a long, long way from 
Tipperary, but I have stated my war credo 
briefly because it shows the point of view 
from which I consider political and inter- 
national questions other than the one 
great question, the successful conduct of 
the war and the making of a peace that 
means the end of German militarism. 



II 



SINJf FEIN AND THE DUBLIN 
INSUERECTION 

WHATEVER my interest in Irish 
affairs and in the home rule 
question before the war, when the war 
broke out I felt that if Germany should 
win, home rule and all similar questions 
would become minor ones, that the 
Irish and everybody else would be subject 
to Prussian sabres, and that it was the 
duty of all to defeat the Germans first. 

While the coming in of the United 
States was an enormous gain for the 
western powers and will ultimately settle 
the contest by the defeat of Germany, it 
seemed to me, before the President's great 
message in answer to the Pope's peace 
17 



18 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

proposals, that there was a certain un- 
reality in the motives as set forth in many 
of our speeches. The English, French, 
Italian and Russian soldiers were not fight- 
ing for democracy or any other cracy or 
for mere humanitarian or pacifist ideals. 
They were fighting for life first ; for free- 
dom of thought and development in what- 
ever form, next; for the old, old watch- 
words of freedom and liberty, in fact. It 
is curious that those who blamed di- 
plomacy for not preventing the war, now 
seem to look to diplomacy, to negotiations, 
to the presentation of the various coun- 
tries' " cases " as a means of forcing peace. 
Diplomacy can no more always prevent 
wars than disinfection and sanitation can 
always prevent epidemics. But that is no 
valid argument against either diplomacy 
or sanitation. The mistake is to rely 
solely upon diplomacy to restore peace 
where diplomacy failed to prevent war. 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 19 

Peace should come, when it does come, only 
from the surrender of Germany. Whether 
it will be because of military defeat, or 
financial collapse, or exhaustion of mili- 
tary supplies, or of starvation, or all of 
these things, does not affect the point. 
Arugment is wasted on a people who have 
been taught to believe in and who worship 
" blood and iron." 

The armies had and have no doubt 
about it. They care nothing for political 
formulas and for academic distinctions be- 
tween nations and governments, which 
they looked and look upon either as mere 
rhetoric or as diplomatic suggestions to 
the German people to revolutionize their 
own government. Therefore I put the 
winning of the war above any Irish or any 
other political questions. 

The Sinn Fevners seem to me to put 
the home rule and other Irish questions 
above the winning of the war. Cardinal 



20 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Newman, emphasizing the importance of 
clear definitions, once wrote that if peo- 
ple would define the meaning of the words 
or terms used bj them or of the positions 
taken by them, they would generally find 
that argument was either superfluous or 
useless ; that they were in fundamentals 
either so close together that argument was 
unnecessary or so wide apart that argu- 
ment was useless. The Sinn Feiners and 
ultra-Nationalists seem to place Irish in- 
terests and Irish ideals first. That is one 
point of view. While I think it is a mis- 
taken one, it is intelligible and logical. 
The world owes Belgium a debt of eternal 
honour and gratitude that she did not take 
that attitude when her hour of trial came. 
And France and the cause of liberty owe 
great Britain an eternal debt of gratitude 
that she promptly came to the side of 
France and Belgium when the awful de- 
cision of war for the right, or neutrality 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 21 

for safety or profit, had to be made. 
With Germany the victor in this war the 
Irish in Ireland after six months' expe^ 
rience with the Germans would look back 
to the conditions in Ireland before the war 
as heaven itself. 

If any Irishman who thinks, thinks that 
a German victory would help Ireland to- 
ward either self-government or independ- 
ence, he might have his thought shaken by 
reading an amusing little book entitled 
The Germans in Cork, being the letters of 
His Excellency, the Baron von Kartoffel 
(Military Governor of Cork in the year 
1918) and others, published very recently 
in Dublin (The Talbot Press, Ltd.). 
That little book shows that under Ger^ 
man rule the Sinn Feiners are pro-Eng- 
lish, that among other things Germany 
has confiscated all the money in the Irish 
savings banks and with that great fund 
is building barracks and concert halls and 



22 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

coffee palaces to replace the public houses ; 
that all men in Ireland between the ages 
of 17 and 35 are made to join the new 
army which, as a precautionary measure, 
is trained in Germany; strikes are pun- 
ished by deportation to Berlin, and it is 
of course *' verhoten " to use the Irish 
language. It is dead. The Sinn Feiners 
who were caught plotting against Ger- 
many were, as a precautionary measure, 
sent as exiles to the shores of the Baltic. 
His Excellency, Baron von Kartoffel, 
writes to his brother in Berlin complaining 
that under the English rule the Irish chil- 
dren's minds had been poisoned, warped 
and stunted, and claims that they ought 
to have been taught that " a certain 
amount of adversity is absolutely neces- 
sary to the growth of nations." Gov- 
ernor General Baron von Kartoffel visits 
the Cork slums, is depressed by what he 
sees there, thinks it over, and has the in- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention S3 

mates of the lunatic asylum *' gassed," the 
remains cremated, clean sheets put on the 
beds and the slum population, escorted by 
soldiers, moved in. Strangely enough 
they showed no gratitude. The picture of 
Prussianizing Ireland is an amusing one. 
But I would not have it believed that hot- 
headed Smn Feiners or a few irreconcilable 
Irishmen in America represent the general 
Irish feeling in this war. 

The war made the contest over the prin- 
ciple that no nation has any longer the 
right to make a war of offence against 
any other nation the greatest contest 
that the modern world has known, the 
most fateful contest of modern times. 
In the light of that great principle, 
there is not much difference between the 
pacifists and some Smn Feiners, The 
pacifist ignores plain facts; the extreme 
Sinn Femer lacks a sense of proportion. 
The pacifist ignores the fact that weakness 



24 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

in defence of the world's peace or reliance 
upon words as a defence against brutes 
who rely upon brute strength is ignomin- 
ious and stupid where it is not cowardly 
or pro-German. Pragmatically consid- 
ered, judged by results, there is not much 
to choose between the pacifist and the pro- 
German. Each one wants immediate 
peace. As Germany wants immediate 
peace, the pacifist and the pro-German are 
playing Germany's game. Pragmatically 
considered, pacifist agitation and pro-Ger- 
man propaganda are approved by Ger- 
many as good because they advance Ger- 
many's interest. But while the effects 
of pacifism and pro-Germanism are sim- 
ilar, there is all the difference in the world 
between the motives of the extreme 
Sinn Feiners, who love Ireland and do 
not care anything about Germany, and 
the motives of the bribed pro-Germans 
who are really traitors to whatever coun- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 25 

try they are in. Until the German con- 
spirators who have brought the misery of 
this war upon the world are defeated, and 
until the German people who have carried 
out the abominable and infamous slaugh- 
ter-program of German autocrats are 
brought to realize that war does not pay, 
questions like home rule and the suffrage 
and other political and economic questions 
are comparative ir relevancies. Therefore 
I think of home rule chiefly as a step in the 
winning of the war. 

The Dublin insurrection of May, 1916, 
was not generally popular in Ireland. If 
its leaders had been put in prison for the 
period of the war, the Sinn Fei/n> move- 
ment, so far as it was merely revolution- 
ary and not constructive, would, as a 
formidable movement, have ended a year 
ago. Because of the temperamental inca- 
pacity which unfortunately included com- 
plete lack of vision which characterized 



26 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

the government that executed those sixteen 
men, after secret trials of small groups 
with many days' intervals between each 
trial, and their folly in arresting several 
thousand obviously innocent men in vari- 
ous parts of Ireland and deporting them 
to England, deep resentment at the Eng- 
lish Government spread through Ireland; 
the leaders of the insurrection came to be 
thought of as martyrs ; and what would 
have been regarded as a generally accept- 
able solution of the home rule question a 
year ago has now become simply impos- 
sible. 

From the Irish point of view, as dis- 
tinct from what I term the international 
view, the British Government in executing 
these sixteen leaders and putting their 
names on the roll of martyrdom has not 
injured the cause of home rule, while the 
men themselves by their ideality and death 
have enormously advanced it. Because of 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 27 

it the national education of Ireland has 
gone on much faster and much further. 
What the British cabinet did not realize 
is the strain of ideality among the Irish 
people. It was still there, and so there 
was an outbreak like the Irish rebellion, 
which would have been impossible in Eng- 
land, and yet quite possible in France or 
Italy. Those leaders, full of enthusiasm 
about a something quite indefinable which 
they called " the Irish republic," made 
their appeal to the Irish enthusiasm for 
the ideal and the beautiful. Now they are 
dead, the appeal goes on all the more. 
But those leaders should be distinguished 
sharply from the very few pro-German 
Irish and from the ordinary ruck of poli- 
ticians, past, present and to come, who 
think that hatred of England is states- 
manship, and who have the one vulgarity 
in common, a belief in Irish hatred of the 
English and in English hatred of the Irish. 



28 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

The English people do not hate the Irish. 
As a rule the English admire the Irish 
tremendously, though at times their ad- 
miration is mixed with apprehension or 
misgiving, not merely of the Irishman's 
intellect and brilliancy, but of his keen 
common sense and practical wisdom and 
the dramatic expression of Irish tempera- 
ment. A muddling nation trying to 
govern one of the cleverest nations in the 
world. But it should not be forgotten 
that the Ulster business was never popu- 
lar or widely approved in England. 

From a Nationalist point of view, the 
Irish rebellion and the fate of its leaders 
have made the world richer. But I can- 
not forgive the government's lack of vision 
and the stupidity of that general who 
sent those idealists to their fate. Many 
in Ireland have come to feel that these 
Irish poets and teachers and writers were 
right, and no one can deny that they made 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 29 

a world-shaking event. All the actors in 
the tragedy, including the military execu- 
tioners, played their parts admirably. 
Nothing was wanting. It was curious 
and tragic how those in power unwittingly 
played up. The uprising was a wild 
thought, and it was a time in Ireland for 
wild thoughts. The executions were the 
only things wanting to make it a great 
and monumental event in Irish history. 
The folly of poets is sometimes wisdom, 
and the death-verdicts of the courts-mar- 
tial and the wisdom of the English states- 
men who approved the verdicts were alto- 
gether folly. What was a problem in- 
volving the highest statesmanship was 
handed over to soldiers. 

Mr. Asquith must have been, and in- 
deed was, profoundly shocked not merely 
by the horrors of the insurrection, but 
by the very fact of the insurrection. The 
pity was that he did not follow the ad- 



so The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

vice of those who urged amnesty and con- 
cord. He candidly admitted that the old 
system of Irish government was no longer 
possible. But he followed the advice of 
" the men of profound wisdom and strong 
will " who " urged that crime is no less 
punishable because it amounts to trea- 
son " and that the leaders must be exe- 
cuted before grievances were to be re- 
moved. The Government were to knock 
the Smn Fevners down with one hand and 
then pick them up with the other. Lin- 
coln would not have followed that coun- 
sel. He did not follow it. We almost 
knew the very tone of the order he would 
have sent disapproving the death-sen- 
tences of the courts martial. Unfortu- 
nately the golden moment for reconcilia- 
tion passed, and it has taken over a year 
for the real work of conciliation, by the 
convention, to be begun. The executions 
profoundly shocked England. They were 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 31 

so out of date. Englishmen generally 
regretted them at the time and felt that 
the leaders had been treated with unneces- 
sary harshness. I have no doubt that 
Mr. Asquith has since sincerely regretted 
the extreme measures taken. 

So the uprising was an Irish event, al- 
most the greatest in Irish history. Cir- 
cumstances made the stage a great stage, 
with the whole world for spectators. The 
tragedy shocked the Irish public mind and 
at the same time healed the Irish amour 
pro pre of its cherished wounds. Since 
the uprising they can say " We have 
done it," and no one may gainsay them. 
They gained in their own consciousness 
and in every one else's. After that it was 
inevitable that sooner or later Sir Edward 
Carson and his followers both in England 
and Ireland should fall into line and the 
union of the North and South be accom- 
plished; inevitable that Ireland and not 



S2 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

England should decide what sort of home 
rule would content Ireland. Between 
Ulster Unionists and the rest of Ireland 
there has always been a kind of sympathy, 
for both are men of war and both are 
rebels. There is no pacifism about them, 
and both are Irish in their feeling about 
England and Ireland. The old Fenian 
leader, John O'Leary, always said this. 
O'Leary called the Ulstermen patriots 
who wanted Ireland for themselves. Their 
anti-Popery he regarded as a passing 
aberration. 

Ireland is the scene of Germany's one 
and only bloodless victory. Perhaps fifty 
thousand British soldiers locked up in Ire- 
land; recruiting there almost at a stand- 
still because of the history of the last 
year, involving a loss to the British army 
of perhaps another fifty thousand men, 
making a total loss of one hundred thou- 
sand from the firing line; the checking 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 33 

of enlistment in Canada, and the contribu- 
tion to the defeat of conscription in Aus- 
tralia — these 'constitute a German victory 
without the firing of a German gun 
or the loss of a German soldier. England 
is paying too costly a price for her past 
bungling in Ireland. 

But I do not wish to imply that Ireland 
as a whole has been disloyal in the war. 
From the outbreak of the war until May, 
1916, Ireland gave unmistakable signs of 
meeting England more than halfway. 
When the war broke out England ap- 
pealed to Ireland and Ireland responded 
generously to the appeal. The two na- 
tions went to war together. But unfortu- 
nately for England, as well as for Ire- 
land, Ireland's efforts have not yet se- 
cured that measure of generous response 
to which she felt she was entitled. 

Before all the executions had been fin- 
ished, Mr. Asquith hurried over to Dublin 



34 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

and in the House of Commons on the 26th 
of May, 1916, Mr. Asquith said: 

" Two main dominant impressions . . . 
were left on my mind. The first was the 
breakdown of the existing machinery of 
Irish Government; and the next was the 
strength and depth, and I might almost 
say, I think without exaggeration, the 
universality, of the feeling in Ireland that 
we have now a unique opportunity for a 
new departure for the settlement of out- 
standing problems, and for a joint and 
combined effort to obtain agreement as to 
the way in which the Government of Ire- 
land is for the future to be carried on. 
As I said, and I repeat, the moment is 
felt in Ireland to be peculiarly opportune, 
and one great reason that has led to that 
opinion both there and here is our expe- 
rience in the War. Irishmen of all creeds 
and classes, north, south, east and west, 
have responded with alacrity and with self- 
devotion to the demands of the cause 
which appeals to them. They have shed, 
they are shedding today, their blood ; giv- 
ing the best of all they had, sacrificing 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 35 

what they prized most, without stint and 
without reserve, in the trenches and on the 
battlefields, which will be forever conse- 
crated to the memory of Ireland, as of 
Great Britain and of the Empire at large. 
Sir, can we who represent Great Britain, 
can they who represent Ireland, tolerate 
the prospect that when this war is over, 
when we have by our joint efforts and 
sacrifices, as we hope and believe we shall, 
achieved our end, here at home Irishmen 
should be arrayed against one another in 
the most tragic and the most debasing of 
all conflicts — internecine domestic strife? 
I say to the House of Commons and to the 
country and to the Empire that the 
thought is inconceivable. That can never 
be. It would be a confession of bank- 
ruptcy, not only of statesmanship, but of 
patriotism." 

Mr. Lloyd George, then a member of 
the Government under Mr. Asquith, later 
undertook to obtain an agreement between 
Ulster and the rest of Ireland. Although 
both Sir Edward Carson and Mr. John 
Redmond each made sacrifices, the settle- 



36 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

merit agreed upon, fortunately for Ireland 
as well as for England, for it was not sat- 
isfactory and would not have been a per- 
manent one, was thrown over by the Gov- 
ernment upon the demand of certain well 
known forces then dominant in the Cab- 
inet. That surrender of Mr. Asquith and 
his associates was, as it has turned out, a 
fortunate thing for Ireland and the Em- 
pire, for the patched-up settlement satis- 
fied no party. It would not have brought 
peace, and would not have endured. 



Ill 



AN ENGUSH VIEW OF THE 
INSURRECTION AND HOME RULE 

THE following English statements are 
from an interesting book Dublin — 
(Explorations and Reflections y published 
just recently (Dublin. Maunsel & Co., 
1917). The author gives an interesting 
and vivid account of what he conceives to 
be the average Englishman's views about 
Ireland. He approaches the subject with 
an open and disinterested mind and with 
a candor and honesty that I like to think 
are characteristic of the liberty-loving 
English people. The facts stated by him 
and his conclusion that Dublin is one of 
the strongholds of liberty, are so inter- 
37 



38 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

esting that I need not apologize for quot- 
ing rather fully from his book : 

"The murder of Mr. Sheehy-Skeffing- 
ton and his companions was a sheer stroke 
of ill-fortune for England for which it is 
difficult to see how she can justly be 
abused. The actual culprit, moreover, 
was an Irishman. But having suffered 
the disaster of this ghastly deed one would 
have thought those responsible for gen- 
eral questions of policy would have paused 
and taken thought. Not so. The meth- 
ods employed in suppressing the Rebellion 
of 1916 were precisely similar to the 
methods employed in suppressing the Re- 
bellions of 1798 and 1803. The military 
mind had apparently remained impervious 
to new ideas throughout the intervening 
century. In spite of all the harm done in 
the past to Anglo-Irish relations by the 
making of martyrs and national heroes, 
more martyrs and more national heroes 
were made, and the prestige of England 
was permanently lowered in the eyes of 
America and of the neutral world. She 
has never since been able to regain the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention S9 

position then lost. If the murder of Mr. 
Sheehy-Skeffington was simply a piece of 
bad luck for England, for the attempts 
made to hush-up that tragic business she 
had no one but herself to blame. 

" These attempts were not successful, 
they were persisted in for a week or two, 
then dropped, under pressure, in such a 
manner as gravely to shake public confi- 
dence in the administration. There was 
something bungling and ignoble in the 
whole proceeding. England behaved like 
a good-hearted, respectable rich man put 
in a false and ignominious position by a 
momentary lack of moral courage. When 
the moment was passed the amends were 
adequate and dignified, but they came too 
late. What a contrast to all this seemed 
the behaviour of the rebel leaders \ They 
were foolish, insane as it appears to us, 
but insanely honest and sincere. Nothing 
ignoble or mean or (according to their 
lights) ungenerous, has ever been proved 
against them. The inevitable reaction in 
England in their favour when the truth 
gradually emerged was very strong, and 
its influence is still felt. The whole epi- 



40 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

sode of the Rebellion has indeed struck 
through the black fog of politics which 
formerly interposed itself between our eyes 
and Ireland, and in an unforgettable 
lightning flash has shown us Ireland's 
bleeding heart and our own the sword 
transfixing it. And it did more, that ter- 
rible revealing lightning — it showed us 
ourselves as we never thought to see our- 
selves. It is an awkward moment for a 
nation which has been publicly thanking 
God that it is not as other nations are, 
that it is no tyrant but the protector of 
the oppressed, no wicked Prussian mili- 
tarist but the enemy of militarism, when 
it suddenly becomes suspect of the very 
crimes which it has set out with a flourish 
of trumpets to punish other races for 
committing. At the outbreak of the re- 
volt we held all the cards, the sympathy 
was all with us. But not even the Ger- 
mans could have played a hand more 
clumsily. After two years of war even 
the man in the street was capable of re- 
flecting that there must be ' something be- 
hind ' the outbreak. And from this it was 
but a step to speculating as to what that 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 41 

something could be. In a little while, the 
alarming news came through that the exe- 
cuted rebels were not mere thieves and 
murderers in the pay of Germany, but 
schoolmasters and poets of blameless pri- 
vate lives, idealists, abstemious, self-deny- 
ing men, deeply religious. What was the 
cause which inspired them? Who was op- 
pressing these people? Had Ireland then 
really a grievance and, if so, what was 
it? . . . 

" After the rising had been crushed my 
country presented herself to my mind as 
a rather pompous old lady, who, whilst 
giving herself tremendous airs of virtue, is 
suddenly struck in the face by a small boy 
who has been stood in the corner by her 
for a longer time than flesh and blood will 
endure. The old lady's consternation is 
pitiable. She may be pompous and ab- 
surd, however, but at least she knows how 
to spank. Presently, she spanks so hard, 
so mercilessly, that all the onlookers, and 
even some of the members of her own fam- 
ily cry out ' for shame ! ' But she takes 
no heed of them. 

" Whatever the Easter Rebellion may 



42 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

or may not have done for Ireland, I think 
it has helped to modify the attitude of a 
portion of the British public towards the 
war. The necessity to win through to an 
honourable peace has not been weakened 
by it ; but the old confidence that we were 
the champions of small nations, that ours 
was a ' Holy War,' that we could never 
succumb to ' militarism ' has received a 
shock. Englishmen began to realize that 
not only were their own personal liberties 
for which their forefathers struggled and 
died being taken from them, but that their 
country was actually regarded as the for- 
eign tyrant by a large proportion of the 
indigenous population of the sister isle. 
It would not surprise me if, when the war 
is over, the Dublin revolt were held to 
have done something to bring peace 
nearer, simply by helping to bring about 
the necessary ' change of heart.' 

" One effect, at least, of the Dublin In- 
surrection is beyond dispute. It made 
Ireland ' actual ' for the average English- 
man — as actual say as Serbia or Monte- 
negro ; for a week or two, as actual as 
Belgium. Its Rebellion, however keenly 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 43 

we might resent it, had some of the crudity 
and brilliance of a work of youthful 
genius, and a marked capacity for touch- 
ing the imaginations even of the unimagi- 
native. And it had a strange quality of 
glamour, the glamour which attaches it- 
self almost immediately to events which 
are destined to live in history. It made 
English people realize (for the first time 
in many cases) that the nation which 
could produce men capable of such a for- 
lorn hope, whose unhappy circumstances 
urged its idealists to offer up their lives 
in the vain chance of bettering them, must 
be one of rare interest — a nation with an 
unconquerable soul . . ." (pages 13-17). 

And again, this courageous and candid 
Englishman says: 

" If I am unable to grow enthusiastic 
about Gaelic, I have at least been pro- 
foundly impressed by those of the ' Irish ' 
Irish whom I have encountered in Dublin. 
The most noticeable thing about them is 
that they are good people, moved by noble 
impulses, austere and simple in their lives 
like men and women who have seen a vision 



44 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

and are filled with a deep purpose. Mis- 
taken they may be in their political ideals 
(though I confess I do not believe it), but 
their sincerity shines out like a bright star 
in a dark night of corruption. It was 
from people of this kind that the leaders 
of the recent rebellion were drawn and 
from whom any further human sacrifices 
which the gods may demand of Ireland will 
doubtless be taken. It is not a pleasant 
thought for an Englishman; but then 
there is scarcely a page of Irish history 
which can provide pleasant thoughts for 
an Englishman. Perhaps that is why, 
with the strong commonsense which is said 
to distinguish his race, no Englishman 
ever reads one. 

" As for the ' moderate ' man in Irish 
politics, I confess he seems to me to be 
much the same as the moderate man every- 
where else. The moderate man is always 
prone to compromise, to engage in politi- 
cal buying and selling. In Ireland he 
seems to be particularly adept at selling: 
perhaps that is the reason why he invari- 
ably prospers. 

" Throughout my stay in Dublin I have 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 45 

been unable to resist the conviction that it 
is the ' Irish ' Irish who hate us ( or at 
least our Government) most bitterly 
whom we English ought most truly to re- 
spect. The clean fire of their loathing 
for oppression is just the fire which so 
much needs re-kindling in our own hearts. 
If we could but join them in the real 
' Holy War ' not only would freedom come 
to Ireland, but to England herself might 
be restored all those qualities which in the 
past have made her great " (pages 189- 
191). 

And again he says : 

" The quickest way to the complete re- 
union of Ireland with the Empire seems to 
be through an exceptionally generous and 
comprehensive measure of Home Rule. / 
cannot imagine any appeal to the gener- 
osity of the Irish people being made in 
vain: the way to arouse the generous emo- 
tions of others is, assuredly, to be gener- 
ous oneself. I do not believe that the 
England which the average Irishman sees 
bears any relation whatever to the true 
England. I shall never believe, in spite of 



46 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

recent history, that my country is really 
militarist at heart. There is, however, a 
certain type of narrow-minded English- 
men, kept exclusively for export purposes, 
who goes about the world like a misguided 
fanatic, dropping the dead weight of the 
white man's burden on the already bowed 
necks of those unfortunate ' backward ' 
races who are too weak to protest. This 
type of Englishman has for centuries 
made the mistake of dumping himself and 
his burdens on to Ireland. Ireland, how- 
ever, though poor in cash is rich in spirit. 
There has been trouble, and there always 
will be trouble until the export to Ireland 
of British Junkers is once and for all pro- 
hibited. When that happens, I see no 
reason why the friendship between Eng- 
land and Ireland, a friendship based on 
mutual understanding, should not ripen 
apace. Both countries will have much to 
gain by it, but of the two I think England 
will gain more. The Irish possess essen- 
tial qualities which the English lack. 
They are to my mind the salt of the Brit- 
ish peoples, the invaluable leaven without 
which the Anglo-Saxon would grow ever 
more lumpy" (pages S65-266). 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 47 

The author goes on to compare the 
relations of England and Ireland to that 
of a husband and wife, the husband having 
been neglectful of the wife's proper 
claims, and the wife taking advantage of 
a moment when the husband was himself 
embarrassed to assert her claims. The 
case goes to court, the lawyers go on talk- 
ing, bargains and settlements are agreed 
to, pledged words broken, the wife grows 
more haggard and weary, and then at 
last the young men who love her dearly 
and who never could understand the law 
and who cannot bear the delays, burst 
out with a sudden madness : 

" With bombs and rifles in their hands 
they march to the doors of the Great 
Court in which so many millions of words 
have been uttered and so little accom- 
plished. They create, this little band, a 
tremendous disturbance with their bombs 
and their explosions ; they startle all the 
Judges out of their seven senses ; they kill. 



48 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

alas, a few of the loyal servants of the 
Court; and they are killed themselves. 
But they are glad to die. They were 
tired of all the writing and all the talking. 
They wanted to do something. 

" When the commotion calms down, and 
the lady's younger and too ardent sup- 
porters have all been executed and impris- 
oned the Court continues its deliberations. 
It continues them still ; but it seems to me 
that things are not the same. The Reb- 
els, pathetic and hopeless as their out- 
break was, have achieved something. The 
Judges are nervous and jangled, a little 
doubtful of their omniscience. The explo- 
sion of the bombs was uncomfortably near 
their own noses. Moreover, the disturb- 
ance has called the attention of the whole 
world to the dilatoriness and incompetence 
with which the Irish case has been con- 
ducted. The Court, and all the counsel 
engaged on both sides are suspect. On 
the rich husband's side the attention of 
many of his relatives (particularly of his 
grandsons and great-nephews) has for the 
first time been attracted to his treatment 
of his unhappy wife. They consider it an 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 49 

abomination, and will no longer support 
him in his meanness. And on the lady's 
side, the outburst of the young men has 
brought about a still more widespread dis- 
trust of the lawyers who, advancing al- 
ways to the struggle with their drawn sal- 
aries in their hands, have nothing but the 
extraction of a certain amount of alimony 
in the form of Land Acts (perilously like 
bribes) to show for their endeavours. 
Yes : on the side of the Dark Rosalsen, the 
hearts of many of her supporters go out 
now to the fools who had no salary at all, 
but who, nevertheless, in a frenzy of gen- 
erous impatience, laid down their lives " 
(pages 270-271). 

Padraic H. Pearse, whose name will be 
always remembered as the leader of the 
revolt, has been presented in such various 
aspects to the American public that it 
will be useful to call attention here to his 
collected works now in course of publica- 
tion of which the first volume has lately 
appeared. Not a single thought can be 
found that is unworthy or ignoble. 



50 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

It was well said in a recent brief Irish 
review of this interesting book: "Prob- 
ably no more selfless spirit ever broke 
itself against the might of the Iron Age 
than this man's spirit which was lit up 
by love of children and country, a dreamer 
with his heart in the Golden Age. This 
man, much more simple than Thomas 
McDonagh or Joseph Plunkett, had a 
much greater and more original personal- 
ity, and as we read this book we under- 
stand his pre-eminence among the revolu- 
tionaries. The fact was he had infinite 
faith, he was selfless, and therefore he was 
a moral rock to lean on. As we read this 
book, with its gentleness and its idealism, 
and think of the storm he raised, we are 
reminded of the scriptural picture of a 
little child leading the lion, only in this 
case it was in no idyllic fields the child 
was, but it was hallooing the beast on to 
rend its enemies. Undoubtedly Padraic 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 51 

Pearse was a powerful and unique person- 
ality, and the publication of this volume 
in which is collected his best writing will 
give him that place in Irish literature 
which he is entitled to by merit, and which 
would be justly his quite apart from the 
place in Irish history he has gained by his 
astonishing enterprise." 

One of Pearse's poems has this : 

" I have squandered the splendid years that 

the Lord God gave to my youth 
In attempting impossible things, deeming 

them alone worth the toil. 
Was it folly or grace? Not men shall 
judge me, but God. 
• • • 
And: 

" I have heard in my heart, that a 

man shall scatter, not hoard. 
Shall do the deed of today, nor take thought 

of tomorrow's teen, 
Shall not bargain or huxter with God." 

That was the faith of Padraic Pearse. 



THE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 

THE feeling of Americans generally 
as to Ireland's right to home rule 
cannot be better expressed than in the 
words of William James in his memorable 
address upon the unveiling of the monu- 
ment in Boston to Robert Gould Shaw. 
At the conclusion of that address he said : 

" Democracy is still upon its trial. 
The civic genius of our people is its only 
bulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, 
neither battleships nor public libraries, 
nor great newspapers nor booming stocks ; 
neither mechanical invention nor political 
adroitness, nor churches nor universities 
nor civil service examinations can save us 
from degeneration if the inner mystery be 

lost. That mystery, at once the secret 
52 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 53 

and the glory of our English-speaking 
race, consists in nothing but two common 
habits, two inveterate habits carried into 
public life, — habits so homely that they 
lend themselves to no rhetorical expres- 
sion, yet habits more precious, perhaps, 
than any that the human race has gained. 
They can never be too often pointed out 
or praised. One of them is the habit of 
trained and disciplined good temper to- 
wards the opposite party when it fairly 
wins its innings. It was by breaking 
away from this habit that the Slave States 
nearly wrecked our Nation. The other is 
that of fierce and mercUess resentment to- 
ward every man or set of men who break 
the public peace. By holding to this habit 
the free States saved her life." 

The people of the United States feel 
that neither Ulster nor those of the Tories 
in England who financed and backed Ul- 
ster's ante-war pronouncements, exercised 
any trained or disciplined good temper to- 
wards nationalist Ireland "when it had 
fairly won its innings." They also feel 



54 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

that the Ulstermen and their English sup- 
porters rightly merited that " fierce and 
merciless resentment toward every man or 
set of men who break the public peace.'* 

To thoughtful observers in this coun- 
try, Ireland seems politically to be some- 
what backward. But there has been a 
great deal of political education recently 
outside of the regular parliamentary 
party. The Irish volunteers encouraged 
a hopeful spirit of self-respect and dis- 
cipline. There is good material for a real 
constitutional settlement. The things 
that were to be feared were secret agree- 
ments, intrigues and weakness. But the 
days of those things have passed. There 
must be no repetitions of the weakness and 
timidity that prompted the Parliamentary 
party to agree to partition twice. The 
convention now sitting in Dublin has a 
unique opportunity for great service. 
The world will applaud a settlement that 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 55 

is a real solution. But a division of Ire- 
land, even of two or three counties, will 
be regarded as an Ulster victory, and will 
be regarded by Irishmen all over the 
world as another trick. Anything that 
even looks like an Ulster victory will be 
bad. 

It is likely that few people in England 
realize to what extent the Irish question 
interests all sections and all varieties of 
people in the United States. In villages 
and cities in the west and south, as well as 
in New England and the Middle Atlantic 
states, the question of Irish government in 
its broad lines is remarkably well known. 
Americans sympathize with Ireland be- 
cause they feel that she had " fairly won 
her innings " and had been deprived of her 
innings. They feel that the resistance 
by Ulster to the home rule act would 
never have gone to the extent that it did 
but for the encouragement of a small 



56 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

group of powerful English Tories and the 
support of certain powerful English finan- 
cial interests, who, wishing to prevent the 
carrying out of English radical reforms, 
looked about for a way of defeating the 
Liberal party, and hit upon Sir Edward 
Carson and the Ulster question as the rock 
on which to break the Liberal party or 
drive it from power. Ulster supplied the 
familiar " moral issue." Old and dying 
feelings of religious bigotry were revived. 
The Tories and the financiers backed and 
financed Ulster, and Sir Edward Carson 
argued and managed the case for them, 
not because they loved Ulster or were 
really afraid of religious persecution, but 
because they wanted to get the Liberals 
out and the Tories in. The result is 
known: the rejection of the home rule act 
by the Lords; the House of Lords act; 
long delay ; then when the House of Lords 
act had become a law, the Ulster volun- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention SI 

teers, Sir Edward Carson's threats, dis- 
affection in the army, the Curragh trea- 
son. Sir Edward Carson's visit to the 
kaiser, open threats of rebellion in Ulster 
by Sir Edward Carson and others in and 
out of Ulster; the Buckingham Palace 
conference and its failure; and then the 
war. Many people forget that the Buck- 
ingham Palace conference over the home 
rule question, which resulted in a dead- 
lock, ended July 24-25, 1914, and that 
England and Germany were at war 
August 4, 1914. It is believed in the 
United States that Germany would not 
have forced the war if she had believed that 
England would come in; that Germany 
felt that England would not come in 
largely because of the Ulster business, and 
"^ of what was believed in Germany to be 
general treason and disaffection in the 
English army; and that therefore the 
Carsons, the Lansdownes, the London- 



58 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

derrjs, the Selbournes and the others have 
a heavy responsibility for the war. If 
that belief is unfounded, still it is a 
belief. 

Then even when the war broke out, Mr. 
Asquith and his associates put the old 
patch-work home rule act on the statute 
books indeed, but provided that it should 
not go into effect until after the war, and 
then only with amendments ; giving, as was 
said, a promissory note payable after 
death, giving with one hand and taking 
away with the other. But at last Eng- 
lish opinion is awake, the English sense of 
justice and fair play is aroused. Eng- 
land has done her best to make this last 
effort a success. The amnesty of all the 
Irish political prisoners, which preceded 
the constitution of the convention, was 
wise statesmanship. 



SOME IRISH OPINIONS 

OPINIONS in Ireland and in England 
differ as to the outcome of the 
convention. Some are hopeful, others 
pessimistic, but none indifferent. I could 
quote from scores of letters from promi- 
nent and influential Englishmen and Irish- 
men, nearly every one giving a different 
shade of opinion. One does not see how 
anything can reconcile Ulster and the 
South; another argues that Sinn Fein 
has split if not ruined the Nationalist 
party ; another that any problem founded 
on a political-cum-religious rock is diffi- 
cult of solution. Others have no patience 
with Sinn Fein and one rather bitterly 
59 



60 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

writes that it is Sinn Fein ilher Allies with 
them and that they would " scrap any 
flag, including the Stars and Stripes, ex- 
cept the German Flag." Another hopes 
that " things will settle down without any 
further bloodshed," but doubts it, and adds 
that " Little is to be expected from fanati- 
cism except blood." 

One of the most distinguished and best- 
informed statesmen and publicists in Eng- 
land who knows Ireland thoroughly is not 
sanguine as to the success of the con- 
vention, adding : " for the Ulster obstruc- 
tionists, having been foolishly told by 
the Government that they would have a 
virtual veto, are likely to be dogged in 
refusing concessions. However, we must 
hope for the best." Others believe that 
nothing but a representative convention 
would be able to produce a result and have 
it accepted. 

But all recognize the vital importance 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 61 

of a generally satisfactory solution by the 
convention. The following from an ar- 
ticle in The Contemporary Review, Au- 
gust, 1917, by Mr. J. W. Good, on The 
Spirit of Belfast is not pessimistic but 
does not dodge the difficulties of the situa- 
tion : 

"If both Ulster parties react in the 
same fashion when England rubs them the 
wrong way they display also, as against 
franc tireurs and unauthorized combatants, 
the freemasonry of professional soldiers. 
Sir Horace Plunkett — to whom we owe 
the saying ' a man in Ireland without a 
party is like a dog in a tennis court ' — 
had the melancholy satisfaction of proving 
the truth of his own epigram, when, on 
suspicion of a weakening in his opposition 
to Home Rule, the Ulster Unionists, who 
for years had been calling on the National- 
ists to bow down to him as the ideal states- 
man, bluntly told him to get back to his 
milk-cans and churns and leave politics to 
those who understood them. There was 
an even more glaring instance in the early 



62 The Irkh Home-Rule Convention 

days of the war when some well-inten- 
tioned folk sought to organize in Belfast 
a Home Defence Corps on the English 
principle, free from any tinge of politics. 
The Unionists immediately declared that 
the proper place for any man who had not 
signed the Covenant was not in some 
' fancy ' corps but in the Irish National 
Volunteers ; the Nationalists were equally 
insistent that if any one outside their or- 
ganization wanted to shoulder a rifle he 
should do so as an Ulster Volunteer. One 
is sometimes tempted to think that the 
paupers in Lady Gregory's comedy, who 
wrangle so venomously and yet are not 
happy away from one another, symbolize 
perfectly the spirit of political Ulster. 

" The better one knows the North of 
Ireland the less one is inclined to accept 
the * two nations ' theory which figures so 
much in current controversy. It is merely 
the old fallacy of the opposition of Celt 
and Saxon, which, as Lecky showed a gen- 
eration ago, bears no relation to the facts 
of the Irish situation. . . . The error 
into which most outsiders fall is that they 
contrast the Ulster Unionist with the Na- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 63 

tionalist of the South and West, and nat- 
urally fail to find much in common between 
them. As a matter of fact, in tempera- 
ment and outlook the Belfast Loyalist, as 
he loves to describe himself, is farther 
apart from the Unionist of Cork or Lim- 
erick than the Protestant of the Shankill 
is from the Catholic of the Falls. His 
quarrel with his Nationalist neighbours is 
less a clash between races than an embit- 
tered family feud. Only near relations 
have the same uncanny knowledge of each 
other's weak points, and the same skill in 
getting their thrusts home between the 
joints of their opponent's armour. There 
is a story of a Jewish Lord Mayor of Bel- 
fast who in a time of civil commotion tried 
to make peace between the hostile mobs, 
and was extinguished by a shout from the 
crowd : ' What right have you to inter- 
fere in a fight between Christians.'' ' Un- 
fortunately, some one is always ready to 
interfere, and it is this knowledge that 
keeps the rival parties from arriving at an 
agreement — were it only an agreement to 
differ. 

" It is generally assumed that the events 



64 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

of recent years have made the task of 
reconciliation in Ulster almost impossible. 
The manoeuvre battles of the old days were 
bad enough, but the rival forces are now 
entrenched in Hindenburg lines which no 
bombardment of facts or arguments can 
breach. There are plenty of facts, unfor- 
tunately, to support this view, but the rule, 
as strangers imagine it to be, that every- 
thing in Ireland goes by contraries, seems 
to me to apply here. Having lived in 
Ulster for years before Sir Edward Carson 
blossomed forth as ' a leader of revolt,' I 
am not impressed by the case which spe- 
cial pleaders in both camps make that old 
hostilities were dying out till the present 
agitation gave them a new lease of life. 
Unionists accept that theory because it 
enables them to contend that there was 
no real demand for Home Rule ; National- 
ists use it as a stick for the backs of 
Tories, who exploited Ulster antagonisms 
in the hope of overthrowing a hated Radi- 
cal Government, As a matter of fact, the 
taint was in the blood, though its pres- 
ence might not have been so plain to a 
casual eye ; and, personally, I believe it is 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 65 

not altogether a bad thing that it should 
have been driven to the surface in baleful 
eruption. Without the eruption the dis- 
ease might have been ignored till it was too 
late ; it is now clear, even to those who pro- 
fessed to regard the spread of the infection 
as a sign of health and energy, that a rem- 
edy MUST BE FOUND, if the wholc body poli- 
tic is not to rot into corruption." 

I regret that Dr. Douglas Hyde is not 
a member of the convention. He was 
one of the organizers of and for over 
twenty years the president of the Gaelic 
League. That League and Sir Horace 
Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organiza- 
tion Society were the two great organiza- 
tions in Ireland that knew neither politics 
nor creed; in whose work Unionist and 
Nationalist and Sinn Feiner and Catholic 
*and Protestant could and did take part 
side by side. Hyde resigned the presi- 
dency of the Gaelic League when it became 
political. He made the great refusal of 



66 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

not consenting to continue at the head of 
the body, to which he had given the best 
years of his life, after it had been cap- 
tured by the extremists and made in part 
into a political organization. Douglas 
Hyde, William Butler Yeats, Lady Greg- 
ory, and George Russell, in literature and 
the drama, and Sir Hugh Lane in art, have 
been the leaders in the preparation for 
home rule and have worked to enrich the 
life of the nation. 

I also regret that Standish O'Grady, 
that great-hearted, wise, tolerant Irish- 
man, the noblest of them all, is not in the 
convention. He is a member of no party, 
because he is above all parties. 

It is generally regretted that the Sinn 
Feiners remained out of the convention. 
The Sinn Feiners holding out against the 
convention deprive it of the services of 
men like Professor John MacNeill, one of 
the most acute minds in Ireland, a man who 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 67 

has never been pro-German or in league 
with any Germans, a man always capable 
of being reasoned with; and of men like 
Gavan Duffy and Colonel Maurice Moore, 
who are reasonable and not really fanat- 
ics. While these men have not gone into 
the convention, my hope is that they will 
give aid to members^of the convention who 
will press on the convention a good meas- 
ure, and if a good measure is agreed upon 
I believe that the majority of the Smn 
Femers will accept it. That is appa- 
rently the policy of the Smn Feiners — to 
remain outside and spur the convention by 
extreme demands, but to accept the agree- 
ment if the system of government is a 
good one and includes Ulster. While the 
''bodies whose representatives form the 
largest part of the convention member- 
ship are no longer representative them- 
selves of political opinion, and while the 
chairmen of county councils are not by 



68 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

character or education fitted to discuss 
constitutional questions, the hope for the 
convention is that a few intelligent 
men who know what they want will form 
a solid bloc and reinforce each other and 
overcome the rest by sheer force of argu- 
ment as to the justice, the necessity, the 
policy, both from an Irish and from an 
imperial point of view, of a complete, sat- 
isfactory, acceptable settlement that will 
include all Ireland. 

A few months ago the question was, 
what kind of folk the Ulster government 
would send, whether they would be mod- 
erate and reasonable or " die-hards." If 
the latter were to be sent, and if it 
appeared that they only came in to 
separate Ulster, then, as a well-informed 
friend of mine wrote, *' the convention 
had better dissolve at once, because parti- 
tion will be no settlement." Bait now 
the question has changed. Sir Ed- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 69 

ward Carson is no longer the idol of 
Ulster. His name is not likely to be en- 
shrined in history in connection with any 
great or beneficent, social, economic or 
political reform. He is more likely to be 
associated with one of the most sinister 
episodes in the history of England and Ire- 
land. In fact Ulster might be pointed to 
as a victim of the power of over-sugges- 
tion in politics. Over-suggestion and 
outer-suggestion may be said to have 
passed into auto-suggestion. But thanks 
to liberal injections of the anti-toxin of 
common sense and cold reason, the fever 
has died down. Ulster is cool and ra- 
tional again. She has waked up. Ulster 
vwill make the sacrifice of her pride and 
will take the risk of what some Ulster- 
men fear may be a peril to their business 
interests. She will place the greater in- 
terest above her own pride and fears. 
She will take the imperial and not the 



70 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

parochial course. She has nothing to 
fear, neither Popery, the cry of which was 
absurd, nor confiscation or spoliation, 
which were equally absurd, nor lack of 
business ability in Ireland outside of Ul- 
ster. The claim that Ulster must have 
guaranties was always an absurdity. The 
patched-up home rule act now upon 
the statute books of Great Britain 
guards in explicit terms against any 
possible dangers to religious liberty and 
to equality before the law in a way that 
probably no other constitution does. 
And if that act, loaded down with guar- 
anties as it is, does not satisfy Ulster, let 
guaranties be piled upon guaranties until 
Ulster must admit that she is satisfied. 

I feel confident that England now real- 
izes that if the work of the convention is 
bungled and a satisfactory measure is not 
passed, nationalist Ireland will settle back 
into a cold anger and that all the work of 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 71 

the past twenty-five years to bring about 
friendly relations between Protestant and 
Catholic will be lost. Seldom has a 
finer opportunity for vision and courage 
come to a body of delegates than to those 
who will control the work of the conven- 
tion. A wise and eloquent Irish friend of 
mine wrote me recently : " The Irish na- 
tional mood is today like molten metal, and 
unless some skilful political artificer can 
seize the glowing mass and press it into the 
ideal mould, it will cool in a mould and 
mood which promise little good." 

Many Sinn Feiners advocate " an inde- 
pendent Ireland." If by that they mean 
^ republic, they will, in my judgment, get 
it only as a sequel of a revolution in Eng- 
land, in which no one believes. On the 
other hand, Americans should not be mis- 
led by the common charges against the 
Sinn Feiners, The main body of them 

ARE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMERS. The 



72 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Parliamentary party has not troubled it- 
self much during the last twenty years 
about the young men who wanted temper- 
ance, co-operation, education and the like. 
And unless the Parliamentary party moves 
along better and sounder lines than in the 
past, it can never lead the people. It may 
machine them, but that will not mend mat- 
ters. 

I believe that colonial home rule would 
amply satisfy nineteen-twentieths of the 
people of Ireland. Wise and liberal Irish- 
men do not care to see a republic 
preached, lest when real grievances are 
settled the demand for a republic 
should persist and throw things into con- 
fusion. If a satisfactory home rule meas- 
ure with Ulster included is produced by 
the convention, their judgment is that 
only the few hotheads would continue to 
demand a republic. But the Nationalists 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 73 

and the majority of the Sinn Feiners be- 
lieve that it would be better for Ireland 
not to be distracted by any further 
politics, if the convention once gives a 
decent settlement. 

The choice of Sir Horace Plunkett as 
chairman of the convention, and the fact 
that George W. Russell (A.E.) is one of 
the leading members of the convention and 
was a member of the committee to suggest 
a chairman, have convinced me that the 
work of the convention will be honest and 
sound. Plunkett's chairmanship is popu- 
lar in Ireland. People know that he is 
straight and wants to bring about a settle- 
ment. He is a good Irishman, and one of 
the sanest and fairest men I have ever 
known. The secretary of the convention 
is Sir Francis Hopwood, and it is signifi- 
cant that one of the first requests made of 
him was for information in regard to the 



74 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

procedure adopted by the convention that 
drew up the constitution for the union of 
South Africa. 

A hopeful sign also is that Mr. Erskine 
Childers is on the secretariat. He is one 
of the clearest thinkers and best writers 
on home rule questions in Ireland or Eng- 
land. His book The Framework of Home 
Rule (1911) is, apart from the eloquent 
article of George Russell's reprinted in 
this book, the only piece of high politics on 
the subject I know. The Government al- 
lowed him to come back from France on 
application for his services. I am told 
that so far the meetings of the convention 
have been in good spirit. 

And now I am leaving the region of fact 
and coming to that of prophecy. I be- 
lieve the Convention will be a success. 
The leaders are more reasonable than their 
followers. Meeting together and talking 
without the newspapers being able to get 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 75 

at them, will lead them to agree upon what 
is right. I am satisfied that the ma- 
jority of the convention will see to it that 
there shall not come out of the convention 
any reasonable grounds for belief that 
Ulster has won, that Ulster has had her 
way, that secret diplomacy has again 
come out on top, that back-stairs intrigue 
and private understandings are not over, 
but that broad statesmanship and a genu- 
ine desire to promote the interests of Ire- 
land and of England have been the guiding 
motive of the convention. I believe that 
the wretched history of the last few years 
will be reversed bv the action of the con- 
vention. I believe that the work of the 
convention will be approved by the coun- 
try, that the convention will give genuine 
home rule to an undivided Ireland, and 
that public opinion in the United States 
and in Canada and Australia, as well as in 
Ireland and England, will applaud and re- 



76 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

joice at its work as a genuine and honest 
settlement. I know that to be the desire 
of men like Sir Horace Plunkett and 
George W. Russell, and if their views pre- 
vail they will have done not merely lasting 
good for Ireland, but will have delivered 
a powerful blow for the defeat of the com- 
mon enemy of all. 

The following is from one of the best- 
informed of the young Irish writers : 

" The present Irish situation will nat- 
urally seem confused at the distance. The 
fact is, however, that the Irish situation 
is rapidly clarifying itself, and we are a 
good deal nearer to a united country than 
we have been in the whole of the later 
period. For the Parliamentary party it 
is, of course, a land-slide : it is so for more 
than the party, for the Unionists even will 
come sliding down the slippery slope and 
be clasped to our bosoms. . . . 

" It has been said, against the Conven- 
tion (which is holding its second meeting 
today), that it has no mandate from the 
country. That is not the fact. It has, 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 77 

unexpressed indeed, but very definitely, a 
mandate. When one gathers together a 
number of facts there gathers round them 
an air, an atmosphere, a kind of psycho- 
logical fringe, and the man who can in- 
terpret this brings home the bacon. 
Around the grouped facts of our conven- 
tion there is such a fringe. The country 
has declared for and against partition, it 
has declared for and against a republic, it 
has declared for and against the old home 
rule bill which is on the statute book: 
it has mentioned, without much emphasis, 
it is true, but without any antagonism, the 
idea of colonial self-government. All the 
other ideas have been advanced and have 
been attacked. Colonial home rule has 
been advanced, and has not been attacked 
by any one. That is the psychological 
fafct which surrounds the other facts, and 
the absolute mandate of the country to the 
men gathered in the Regent House (that 
last infirmary for noble minds) is. Let ye 
talk about colonial home rule, and if ye 
don't talk about that then shut your gobs 
and go home — Gob, by the bye, means in 
the Irish the beak of a bird." 



78 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

A solution that deals honestly and 
justly with the financial problems and 
gives home rule to a united Ireland, will be 
welcomed not merely in Ireland but in the 
United States. Those interested in Irish 
affairs in the United States have not been 
appeased by the mere appointment of the 
convention, for it has come late and after 
many sad blunders. .They are awaiting 
its verdict. 



VI 

GEORGE W. RUSSELL (a. E.) 

THE author of Thoughts for a Con- 
vention is a great Irishman. In him 
are combined in a unique degree many tal- 
ents and accomplishments. He is an ar- 
tist of charm and originality, a poet of 
deep vision and beauty, an eloquent 
speaker, a prose writer of great distinc- 
ti(hi, an expert agricultural and coopera- 
tive organizer and the editor of The Irish 
Homestead, a weekly agricultural paper, 
one of the best published in English. Like 
his friend and my friend William Butler 
Yeats, he delights to discover and encour- 
age young poets, writers and artists. He 

has been a leading spirit for years in the 
79 



80 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 
he is an intimate friend and the righthand 
helper of Sir Horace Plunkett in all his 
work, and a force in contemporary Ire- 
land.^ His last work The National Being 
(Maunsel, Dublin 1916; New York, The 
Macmillan Co.) combines fine vision and 
practical thought. A list of his creative 
works and his other writings on economics 
are given in a note below. 

Russell is an Ulster man and a Protes- 
tant, but a member of no political party. 
It is safe to say that he knows Ulster as 

^ He is the author of Homeward: Songs by 
the Way, 1894. The Future of Ireland and 
The Awakening of the Fires, 1897. Ideals in 
Ireland: Priesi or Hero?, 1897. The Earth 
Breath, 1897. Literary Ideals in Ireland, 
1899 (in collaboration). Ideals in Ireland, 
1901 (in collaboration). The Nuts of Knowl- 
edge, 1903. Controversy in Ireland, 1904. 
The Divine Vision, 1904. The Mask of 
Apollo, 1904. New Poems, 1904 (edited). 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 81 

well as if not better than Sir Edward Car- 
son does. Indeed Sir Edward Carson is 
not an Ulsterman at all. Russell's 
Thoughts for a Convention has had a 
great effect on Southern Unionist and 
Ulster opinion. It first appeared in The 
Irish Times, a Unionist paper, and has 
been several times reprinted. It is the 
best, the sanest, the most unbiased and at 
the same time the most eloquent discussion 
of the general principles underlying the 
Irish home rule question that I have seen. 
Seldom have I read a more eloquent and 

5^ Still Waters, 1906. Some Irish Essays, 
1906. Deirdre (A play), 1907. The Hero 
in Man, 1909. The Renewal of Youth, 1911. 
The United Irishwomen, 1912 (in collabora- 
tion). Co-operation and Nationality, 1912. 
The Rural Community, 1913. Collected 
Poems, 1913. Gods of War and other Poems, 
1915. Imaginations and Reveries, 1915; and 
the last and one of his best books. The Na- 
tional Being (1916). 



82 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

persuasive discussion of a great political 
question. Plato could not have done it 
better in the Athens of his day. His 
statement of the history, the aims and the 
achievements of the Unionists, the Na- 
tionalists and the Simfi Feiners is sympa- 
thetic and just. He explains from full 
knowledge that the usual charge of in- 
sincerity against the constitutional Na- 
tionalists is unjust, and he gives them full 
credit for the many good measures won by 
them in their long contest. But he points 
out the weakness of a constitutional party 
that finds itself between two extreme par- 
ties, each of which desires a settlement in 
accordance with fundamental principles. 
His exposition of the Ulster feeling is put 
in a way that ought to touch the pride of, 
and make a strong appeal to all Irishmen 
of every party and creed. How thin and 
poor, in comparison with his fine and ele- 
vated reasoning, are the usual constitu- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 83 

tional arguments! His demonstration of 
the impracticability and impossibility of a 
completely independent Ireland is conclu- 
sive, and, I believe, will be agreed to by the 
majority of the extremists themselves. 
His demonstration of the necessity of a 
complete separation of religion from poli- 
tics is equally conclusive. His argument 
as to the profound wisdom of a real settle- 
ment, in the interests not merely of Ire- 
land or Great Britain, but of the whole 
Empire, is as eloquent as it is wise. 

I might, if I were in the convention, not 
hold out for the complete exclusion of 
Irish members from Westminster. And I 
cannot agree to his dictum that it was the 
question of Alsace-Lorraine that led to 
" the inevitable war " (paragraph 17). 

The editor of The Irish Times is quoted 
as having said that Russell had shaken the 
faith of Unionists in their innermost taber- 
nacles. It is regarded in Ireland as re- 



84 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

markable that such articles should have 
appeared in a Unionist paper without a 
single letter of protest, whereas The Irish 
Times readers are as a rule only too ready 
to rush into print protesting that they will 
never have it, and so forth. 

In The Nineteenth Century for July, 
1917, Professor A. V. Dicey, the veteran 
opponent of home rule in any form for 
thirty years, had an article entitled Is it 
Wise to Establish Home Rule Before the 
End of the War? The Professor referred 
sympathetically to Russell's pamphlet and 
even wrote with unusual courtesy and 
moderation, for him, of the Sinn Feiners. 
Of Russell's pamphlet he said: 

" An Englishman interested in the home 
rule question should read with care 
Thoughts for a Convention by A. E. (Mr. 
George Russell), Maunsel and Co., Dublin. 
I have no doubt that A. E. disagrees with 
all my conclusions, but his Memorandum, 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 85 

though written from an entirely Irish 
point of view, is characterized by a noble 
spirit, and brings before Englishmen feel- 
ings, thoughts, and sometimes facts with 
regard to Ireland which they are apt to 
overlook." 

Twenty thousand copies of the pam- 
phlet were sold within a few days after its 
publication, which means something in Ire- 
land, and The Irish Times itself has a 
large circulation. 

^This would be no place, even if I were 
able to do it, to discuss the details of the 
problems before the convention. I can 
do no better than to refer to Erskine Chil- 
ders' The Framework of Home Rule (Lon- 
don: Edward Arnold, 1911) for a com- 
plete discussion of Irish parliamentary 
history, the Grattan Parliament, the 
Union, Canada and Ireland, Australia and 
Ireland, South Africa and Ireland, and 
their analogies, the Ireland of today, the 



86 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

framework of home rule, the Union fi- 
nance, financial independence, land pur- 
chase, and a sketch of an Irish constitu- 
tion. The lamented Professor T. M. 
Kettle's little book Home Rule Finance, an 
Experiment injustice (Dublin, 1911) and 
his admirally-tempered book The Open 
Secret of Ireland (191S) are also instruc- 
tive. He had been a member of Parlia- 
ment, and at the outbreak of the war was 
a professor in the Irish National Univer- 
sity. He entered the army, and, like the 
brave Maj or William Redmond, was killed 
a few months ago, leading his Irish sol- 
diers. 

An interesting discussion of What Ire- 
land Wants appeared not long ago in 
the Fortnightly Review, July, 1917, by Sir 
J. R. O'ConneU. He considers some of the 
fundamental problems confronting the 
convention and the outlook after legisla- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 87 

tive autonomy has been conferred upon 
Ireland. It is an article that will repay 
reading. 

The article by Professor Dicey in The 
Nineteenth Century, July, 1917, above re- 
ferred to, is a typical example of lawyers' 
special pleading. He argues at some 
length that the establishment of any form 
of home rule in Ireland would, during the 
continuance of the war, be a cause of weak- 
ness to Great Britain and the British Em- 
pire. But the Professor seems to forget 
thaf Bismarck brought about the union of 
the German kingdoms into an empire dur- 
ing a war, that Lincoln emancipated the 
slaves in the middle of the Civil War, and 
that neither Bismarck nor Lincoln was in- 
fluenced by constitutional arguments or 
lawyers' fears. The Professor gives an 
interesting sketch of the three parties now 
in Ireland — the Constitutional or Parlia- 



88 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

mentary Nationalists, the Sinm, Feiners 
and the Unionists, and he frankly admits 
that every Irish party prefers that Ire- 
land, whatever her relation to Great Brit- 
ain, should be administratively governed 
as one country. The Professor gives a 
peculiar and even amusing explanation of 
the failure of the Asquith-Lloyd George 
attempt at reconciliation and settlement in 
1916, saying that " Englishmen cannot 
care ardently about more than one impor- 
tant matter at a time." He admits that 
there is a great change of feeling among 
Englishmen toward the demand of Irish- 
men for home rule, and gives his case en- 
tirely away by stating that every argu- 
ment used in his article must be read sub- 
ject to the limitation " that no course of 
action or inaction is commendable which 
is really opposed to the success of Eng- 
land's armies." 

Well, England has spoken. She means 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 89 

business this time. The author of 
Thoughts for a Convention has wisely and 
justly said: 

" The Premier of an alien cabinet has 
declared that there is no measure of self- 
government which Great Britain would not 
assent to being set up in Ireland, if Irish- 
men themselves could but come to an 
agreement." 

In justice to him, I must also add that 
Sir Edward Carson has seen the light and 
longs for " some solution of that long- 
continued Irish question that would meet 
the ideal of liberty of all the parties in 
Ireland." One closes the review contain- 
ing Professor Dicey's article without any 
doubt what the verdict will be, and it will 
not be such a verdict as Professor Dicey, 
whose views, I am happy to believe, are not 
now widely shared in England, would ren- 
der. 



VII 

SIE HORACE PLUNKETT 

SIR HORACE PLUNKETT, whose 
speech at Dundalk, Ireland, June 25, 
1917, is reprinted here, needs no introduc- 
tion to American readers. He is almost as 
v^ell known in the United States as in Ire- 
land. His career as a member of Par- 
liament, then as head of the Irish Depart- 
ment of Agriculture and Technical In- 
struction, as the founder and head of the 
Irish Agricultural Organization Society, 
and his writings, need not be dwelt on 
here. All well-wishers of Ireland and all 
those who hope for a satisfactory and 
honest solution of the home rule question, 
were glad to see that Sir Horace Plunkett 

had been chosen chairman of the conven- 

90 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 91 

tion. On private as well as public grounds 
it was a great satisfaction to see this rec- 
ognition by Irishmen of one who has 
worked so honestly for the good of Ireland, 
especially considering how badly he was 
treated by the Liberal Government of Ire- 
land in 190T-1908. Those who are inter- 
ested in the life-work of this good Irish- 
man might read with profit the book S^r 
Horace Plunkett and His Place in the Irish 
Nation by Edward E. Lysaght (Dublin 
and London 1916). The author of that 
book is also a member of the convention. 

Sir Horace demonstrates the complete 
impracticability of the extremists who 
dream that the stattis and the government 
of Ireland could or would be settled at the 
peace conference. The convention is 
Ireland's peace conference. If the con- 
vention's work is approved by Ireland, as 
I feel sure it will be, there will be no real 
Irish question to submit to the great peace 



92 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

conference that will follow Germany's sur- 
render. The temporary inclusion of Ul- 
ster, as suggested by Sir Horace Plunkett 
in his speech reprinted here, will not now 
satisfy, A year ago it was wise states- 
manship. Today it is not. There must 
be no division, nothing tentative or tem- 
porary about the settlement. 

Sir Horace, at the end of his address, 
quotes from a song — probably an Eng- 
lish song — that he says he remembers 
was popular some fifty years ago, called 
Strangers Yet. The thought underlying 
the six lines quoted is a fine one, but the 
verse is bad and sentimental. The Gaelic 
League and leaders of the Irish literary 
movement — W. B. Yeats, Douglas Hydo, 
George Russell, John M. Synge and 
others — have almost driven that sort of 
sentimentality out of Ireland. The cheap 
rhetoric and the sham pathos that passes 
for " eloquence " in some American-Irish 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 93 

circles would simply not be tolerated in 
Ireland today. I am sure Sir Horace 
would agree that the following, from the 
eloquent pen of the chivalrous Captain 
Tom Kettle, is better: 

" Bond^ from the toil of hate we may not 

cease : 
Free, we are free to be your friend. 
But when you make your banquet, and we 

come, 
Soldier with equal soldier must we sit. 
Closing a battle, not forgetting it. 
This mate and mother of valiant rebels dead 
Must come with all her history on her head. 
We keep the past for pride. 
Nor war nor peace shall strike our poets 

dumb: 
No rawest squad of all Death's volunteers. 
No simplest man who died 
To tear your flag down, in the bitter years. 
But shall have praise, and three times thrice 

again. 
When, at that tabic, men shall drink with 

men." 



94f The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

If the convention should fail of real re- 
sult, a generally accepted result, all well- 
wishers not merely of Ireland but of the en- 
tire Allied cause will regret it. 

My prediction is that the convention 
will agree and that the country will 
ratify its verdict. Certainly nothing 
would be more popular among Americans, 
with their undoubted sympathy for Ire- 
land's aspirations for autonomy, than the 
achievement now of a real measure of home 
rule — one uniting all Ireland. 

New York, August 28-30, 191T 



THOUGHTS FOR A CONVENTION 

Memorandum on the State of Ireland 
By Geoege W. Russell (A.E.) 



THOUGHTS FOR A CONVENTION 

1-. There are moments in history when 
by the urgency of circumstance every one 
in a country is drawn from normal pur- 
suits to consider the affairs of the nation. 
The merchant is turned from his ware- 
house, the bookman from his books, the 
farmer from his fields, because they realize 
that the very foundations of the Society, 
under whose shelter they were able to 
carry on their vocations, are being shaken, 
and they can no longer be voiceless, or 
leave it to deputies, unadvised by them, to 
arrange national destinies. We are all 
accustomed to endure the annoyances and 
irritations caused by legislation which is 
not agreeable to us, and solace ourselves 
by remembering that the things which 
97 



98 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

really matter are not affected. But when 
the destiny of a nation, the principles by 
which life is to be guided are at stake, all 
are on a level, are equally affected and 
are bound to give expression to their opin- 
ions. Ireland is in one of these moments 
of history. Circumstances with which we 
are all familiar and the fever in which the 
world exists have infected it, and it is like 
molten metal the skilled political artificer 
might pour into a desirable mould. But 
if it is not handled rightly, if any factor 
is ignored, there may be an explosion 
which would bring on us a fate as tragic 
as anything in our past history. Irish- 
men can no longer afford to remain aloof 
from each other, or to address each other 
distantly and defiantly from press or plat- 
form, but must strive to understand each 
other truly, and to give due weight to each 
others' opinions, and, if possible arrive at 
a compromise, a balancing of their diver- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 99 

sities, which may save our country from 
anarchy and chaos for generations to 
come. 

2. An agreement about Irish Govern- 
ment must be an agreement, not between 
two but three Irish parties first of all, and 
afterwards with Great Britain. The 
Premier of a coalition Cabinet has declared 
that there is no measure of self govern- 
ment which Great Britain would not as- 
sent to being set up in Ireland, if Irish- 
men themselves could but come to an agree- 
ment. Before such a compromise between 
Irish parties is possible there must be a 
clear understanding of the ideals of these 
parties, as they are understood by them- 
selves, and not as they are presented in 
party controversy by special pleaders 
whose obj ect too often is to pervert or dis- 
credit the principles and actions of op- 
ponents, a thing which is easy to do be- 
cause all parties, even the noblest, have 



100 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

followers who do them disservice by igno- 
rant advocacy or excited action. If we 
are to unite Ireland we can only do so by 
recognising what truly are the principles 
each party stands for, and will not for- 
sake, and for which if necessary they will 
risk life. True understanding is to see 
ideals as they are held by men between 
themselves and Heaven; and in this mood 
I will try, first of all, to understand the 
position of Unionists, Sinn Feiners and 
Constitutional Nationalists as they have 
been explained to me by the best minds 
among them, those who have induced 
others of their countrymen to accept those 
ideals. When this is done we will see if 
compromise, a balancing of diversities, be 
not possible in an Irish State where all 
that is essential in these varied ideals may 
be harmonized and retained. 

3. I will take first of all the position of 
Unionists. They are, many of them, the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 101 

descendants of settlers who, by their en- 
trance into Ireland broke up the Gaelic 
uniformity and introduced the speech, the 
thoughts characteristic of another race. 
While they have grown to love their coun- 
try as much as any of Gaelic origin, and 
their peculiarities have been modified by 
centuries of life in Ireland and by inter- 
marriage, so that they are much more akin 
to their fellow-countrymen in mind and 
manner than they are to any other peo- 
ple, they still retain habits, beliefs and 
traditions from which they will not part. 
They form a class economically powerful. 
They have openness and energy of charac- 
ter, great organizing power and a mastery 
over materials, all qualities invaluable in 
an Irish State. In North-East Ulster 
where they are most homogeneous they 
conduct the affairs of their cities with 
great efficiency, carrying on an interna- 
tional trade not only with Great Britain 



102 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

but with the rest of the world. They have 
made these industries famous. They be- 
lieve that their prosperity is in large meas- 
ure due to their acceptance of the Union, 
that it would be lessened if they threw in 
their lot with the other Ireland and ac- 
cepted its ideals, that business which now 
goes to their shipyards and factories would 
cease if they were absorbed in a self-gov- 
erning Ireland whose spokesmen had an 
unfortunate habit of nagging their neigh- 
bours and of conveying the impression that 
they are inspired by race hatred. They 
believe that an Irish legislature would be 
controlled by a majority, representatives 
mainly of small farmers, men who had no 
knowledge of affairs, or of the peculiar 
needs of Ulster industry, or the intricacy 
of the problems involved in carrying on an 
international trade; that the religious 
ideas of the majority would be so favoured 
in education and government that the fav- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 103 

ouritism would amount to religious oppres- 
sion. They are also convinced that no 
small country in the present state of the 
world can really be independent, that such 
only exist by sufferance of their mighty 
neighbours, and must be subservient in 
trade policy and military policy to retain 
even a nominal freedom; and that an in- 
dependent Ireland would by its position be 
a focus for the intrigues of powers hostile 
to Great Britain, and if it achieved inde- 
pendence Great Britain in self protection 
would be forced to conquer it again. They 
consider that security for industry and 
freedom for the individual can best be pre- 
served in Ireland by the maintenance of the 
Union, and that the world spirit is with 
the great empires, 

4. The second political group may be 
described as the spiritual inheritors of the 
more ancient race in Ireland. They re- 
gard the preservation of their nationality 



104f The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

as a sacred charge, themselves as a con- 
quered people owing no allegiance to the 
dominant race. They cannot be called 
traitors to it because neither they nor their 
predecessors have ever admitted the right 
of another people to govern them against 
their will. They are inspired by an an- 
cient history, a literature stretching be- 
yond the Christian era, a national culture 
and distinct national ideals which they de- 
sire to manifest in a civilization which shall 
not be an echo or imitation of any other. 
While they do not depreciate the worth of 
English culture or its political system they 
are as angry at its being imposed on them 
as a young man with a passion for art 
would be if his guardian insisted on his 
adopting another profession and denied 
him any chance of manifesting his own 
genius. Few hatreds equal those caused 
by the denial or obstruction of national 
aptitudes. Many of those who fought in 



The Irish Home-Rule Corwention 105 

the last Irish insurrection were fighters not 
merely for a political change but were 
rather desperate and despairing champions 
of a culture which they held was being 
stifled from infancy in Irish children in the 
schools of the nation. They believe that 
the national genius cannot manifest itself 
in a civilization and is not allowed to mani- 
fest itself while the Union persists. They 
wish Ireland to be as much itself as Japan, 
and as free to make its own choice of politi- 
cal principles, its culture and social order, 
and to develop its industries unfettered by 
the trade policy of their neighbours. 
Their mood is unconquerable, and while 
often overcome it has emerged again and 
again in Irish history, and it has perhaps 
more adherents to-day that at any period 
since the Act of Union, and this has been 
helped on by the incarnation of the Gaelic 
spirit in modern Anglo-Irish literature, 
and a host of brilliant poets, dramatists 



106 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

and prose writers who have won interna- 
tional recognition, and have increased the 
dignity of spirit and the self-respect of 
the followers of this tradition. They 
assert that the Union kills the soul of 
the people ; that empires do not permit the 
intensive cultivation of human life: that 
tbey destroy the richness and variety 
of existence by the extinction of peculiar 
and unique gifts, and the substitution 
therefor of a culture which has its value 
mainly for the people who created it, 
but is as alien to our race as the 
mood of the scientist is to the artist 
or poet. 

5, The third group occupies a middle 
position between those who desire the per- 
fecting of the Union and those whose 
claim is for complete independence: and 
because they occupy a middle position, 
and have taken colouring from the ex- 
tremes between which they exist they have 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 107 

been exposed to the charge of insincerity, 
which is unjust so far as the best minds 
among them are concerned. They have 
aimed at a middle course, not going far 
enough on one side or another to secure 
the confidence of the extremists. They 
have sought to maintain the connexion 
with the empire, and at the same time to 
acquire an Irish control over administra- 
tion and legislation. They have been 
more practical than ideal, and to their 
credit must be placed the organizing of 
the movements which secured most of the 
reforms in Ireland since the Union, such 
as religious equality, the acts securing to 
farmers fair rents and fixity of tenure, 
the wise and salutary measures making 
possible the transfer of land from land- 
lord to tenant, facilities for education at 
popular universities, the labourers' acts 
and many others. They are a practical 
party taking what they could get, and 



108 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

because they could show ostensible results 
they have had a greater following in Ire- 
land than any other party. This is nat- 
ural because the average man in all coun- 
tries is a realist. But this reliance on 
material results to secure support meant 
that they must always show results, or 
the minds of their countrymen veered to 
those ultimates and fundamentals which 
await settlement here as they do in all 
civilizations. As in the race with Atal- 
anta the golden apples had to be thrown 
in order to win the race. The intellect 
of Ireland is now fixed on fundamentals, 
and the compromise this middle party is 
able to offer does not make provision for 
the ideals of either of the extremists, and 
indeed meets little favour anywhere in a 
country excited by recent events in world 
history, where revolutionary changes are 
expected and a settlement far more in ac- 
cord with fundamental principles. 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 109 

6. It is possible that many of the rank 
and file of these parties will not at first 
agree with the portraits painted of their 
opponents, and that is because the special 
pleaders of the press, who in Ireland are, 
as a rule, allowed little freedom to state 
private convictions, have come to regard 
themselves as barristers paid to conduct a 
case, and have acquired the habit of isolat- 
ing particular events, the hasty speech or 
violent action of individuals in localities, 
and of exhibiting these as indicating the 
whole character of the party attacked. 
They misrepresent Irishmen to each other. 
The Ulster advocates of the Union, for 
example, are accustomed to hear from 
\ their advisers that the favourite employ- 
ment of Irish farmers in the three south- 
ern provinces is cattle driving, if not 
worse. They are told that Protestants 
in these provinces live in fear of their 
lives, whereas anybody who has knowledge 



110 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

of the true conditions know that, so far 
from being riotous and unbusinesslike, the 
farmers in these provinces have developed 
a network of rural associations, dairies, 
bafcon factories, agricultural and poultry 
societies, etc., doing their business effi- 
ciently, applying the teachings of science 
in their factories, competing in quality of 
output with the very best of the same class 
of society in Ulster and obtaining as good 
prices in the same market. As a matter 
of fact this method of organization now 
largely adopted by Ulster farmers was 
initiated in the South. In the charge of 
intolerance I do not believe. Here, as 
in all other countries, there are unfor- 
tunate souls obsessed by dark powers, 
whose human malignity takes the form 
of religious hatreds, but I believe, and 
the thousands of Irish Protestants in 
the Southern Counties will affirm it as 
true, that they have nothing to complain 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 111 

of in this respect. I am sure that in this 
matter of religious tolerance these prov- 
inces can stand favourable comparison 
with any country in the world where there 
are varieties of religions, even with Great 
Britain. I would plead with my Ulster 
compatriots not to gaze too long or too 
credulously into that distorting mirror 
held up to them, nor be tempted to take 
individual action as representative of the 
mass. How would they like to have the 
depth or quality of spiritual life in their 
great city represented by the scrawlings 
and revilings about the head of the Cath- 
olic Church to be found occasionally on 
the blank walls of Belfast? If the same 
method of distortion by selection of facts 
was carried out there is not a single city 
or nation which could not be made to ap- 
pear baser than Sodom or Gomorrah and 
as deserving of their fate. 

7. The Ulster character is better ap- 



112 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

predated by Southern Ireland, and there 
is little reason to vindicate it against any 
charges except the slander that Ulster 
Unionists do not regard themselves as 
Irishmen, and that they have no love for 
their own country. Their position is 
that they are Unionists, not merely be- 
cause it is for the good of Great Britain, 
but because they hold it to be for the good 
of Ireland, and it is the Irish argument 
weighs with them, and if they were con- 
vinced it would be better for Ireland to be 
self-governed they would throw in their 
lot with the rest of Ireland, which would 
accept them gladly and greet them as a 
prodigal son who had returned, having 
made, unlike most prodigal sons, a for- 
tune, and well able to be the wisest adviser 
in family affairs. It is necessary to pref- 
ace what I have to say by way of argu- 
ment or remonstrance to Irish parties by 
words making it clear that I write without 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 113 

prejudice against any party, and that I 
do not in the least underestimate their 
good qualities or the weight to be attached 
to their opinions and ideals. It is the 
traditional Irish way, which we have too 
often forgotten, to notice the good in the 
opponent before battling with what is evil. 
So Maeve, the ancient Queen of Connacht, 
looking over the walls of her city of 
Cruachan at the Ulster foemen, said of 
them, " Noble and regal is their appear- 
ance," and her own followers said, " Noble 
and regal are those of whom you speak." 
When we lost the old Irish culture we lost 
the tradition of courtesy to each other 
which lessens the difficulties of life and 
makes it possible to conduct controversy 
without 'Creating bitter memories. 

8. I desire first to argue with Irish 
Unionists whether it is accurate to say of 
them, as it would appear to be from their 
spokesmen, that the principle of national- 



114 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

ity cannot be recognized by them or al- 
lowed to take root in the commonwealth 
of dominions which form the Empire. 
Must one culture only exist? Must all 
citizens have their minds poured into the 
same mould, and varieties of gifts and 
cultural traditions be extinguished? 
What would India with its myriad races 
say to that theory? What would Canada 
enclosing in its dominion and cherishing 
a French Canadian nation say? Union- 
ists have by every means in their power 
discouraged the study of the national lit- 
erature of Ireland though it is one of the 
most ancient in Europe, though the schol- 
ars of France and Germany have founded 
journals for Its study, and its beauty is 
being recognized by all who have read it. 
It contains the race memory of Ireland, 
its imaginations and thoughts for two 
thousand years. Must that be obliter- 
ated? Must national character be steril- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 115 

ized of all taint of its peculiar beauty? 
Must Ireland have no character of its 
own but be servilely imitative of its neigh- 
bour in all things and be nothing of itself? 
It is objected that the study of Irish his- 
tory, Irish literature and the national cul- 
ture generates hostility to the Empire. 
Is that a true psychological analysis? 
Is it not true in all human happenings 
that if people are denied what is right and 
natural they will instantly assume an at- 
titude of hostility to the power which 
denies? The hostility is not inherent in 
the subject but is evoked by the denial. 
I put it to my Unionist compatriots that 
the ideal is to aim at a diversity of cul- 
ture, and the greatest freedom, richness 
and variety of thought. The more this 
richness and variety prevail in a nation 
the less likelihood is there of the tyranny 
of one culture over the rest. We should 
aim in Ireland at that freedom of the an- 



116 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

cient Athenians, who, as Pericles said, 
listened gladly to the opinions of others 
and did not turn sour faces on those who 
disagreed with them. A culture which is 
allowed essential freedom to develop will 
soon perish if it does not in itself contain 
the elements of human worth which make 
for immortality. The world has to its 
sorrow many instances of freak religions 
which were persecuted and so by natural 
opposition were perpetuated and hard- 
ened in belief. We should allow the great- 
est freedom in respect of cultural develop- 
ments in Ireland so that the best may 
triumph by reason of superior beauty and 
not because the police are relied upon to 
maintain one culture in a dominant posi- 
tion. 

9. I have also an argument to address 
to the extremists whose claim, uttered 
lately with more openness and vehemence, 
is for the complete independence of the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 117 

whole of Ireland, who cry out against 
partition, who will not have a square mile 
of Irish soil subject to foreign rule. That 
implies they desire the inclusion of Ulster 
and the inhabitants of Ulster in their 
Irish State. I tell them frankly that if 
they expect Ulster to throw its lot in 
with a self-governing Ireland they must 
remain within the commonwealth of do- 
minions which constitute the Empire, be 
prepared loyally, once Ireland has com- 
plete control over its internal affairs, to 
accept the status of a dominion and the 
responsibilities of that wider union. If 
they will not accept that status as the 
Boers did, they w^ill never draw that im- 
portant and powerful Irish party into an 
Irish State except by force, and do they 
think there is any possibility of that.? It 
is extremely doubtful whether if the 
world stood aloof, and allowed Irishmen 
to fight out their own quarrels among 



118 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

themselves, that the fighters for complete 
independence could conquer a community 
so numerous,, so determined, so wealthy, 
so much more capable of providing for 
themselves the plentiful munitions by 
which alone one army can hope to conquer 
another. In South Africa men who had 
fiercer traditional hostilities than Irish- 
men of different parties here have had, 
who belonged to different races, who had 
a few years before been engaged in a racial 
war, were great enough to rise above these 
past antagonizms, to make an agreement 
and abide faithfully by it. Is the same 
magnanimity not possible in Ireland.'^ I 
say to my countrymen who cry out for 
the complete separation of Ireland from 
the Empire that they will not in this gen- 
eration bring with them the most power- 
ful and wealthy, if not the most numerous, 
party in their country. Complete con- 
trol of Irish afi^airs is a possibility, and I 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 119 

suggest to the extremists that the status 
of a self-governing dominion inside a fed- 
eration of dominions is a proposal which, 
if other safeguards for minority interests 
are incorporated, would attract Union- 
ist attention. But if these men who de- 
pend so much in their economic enter- 
prises upon a friendly relation with their 
largest customers are to be allured into a 
self-governing Ireland there must be ac- 
ceptance of the Empire as an essential 
condition. The Boers found it not im- 
possible to accept this status for the sake 
of a United South Africa. Are our Irish 
Boers not prepared to make a compromise 
and abide by it loyally for the sake of a 
united Ireland? 

10. A remonstrance must also be ad- 
dressed to the middle party in that it has 
made no real effort to understand and con- 
ciliate the feelings of Irish Unionists. 
They have indeed made promises, no doubt 



120 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

sincerely, but they have undone the effect 
of all they said by encouraging of recent 
years the growth of sectarian organiza- 
tions with political aims and have relied 
on these as on a party machine. It may 
be said that in Ulster a similar organiza- 
tion, sectarian with political objects, has 
long existed, and that this justified a 
counter organization. Both in my opin- 
ion are unjustifiable and evil, but the 
backing of such an organization was 
specially foolish in the case of the major- 
ity, whose main object ought to be to al- 
lure the minority into the same political 
fold. The baser elements in society, the 
intriguers, the job-seekers, and all who 
would acquire by influence what they can- 
not attain by merit, flock into such bodies, 
and create a sinister impression as to their 
objects and deliberations. If we are to 
have national concord among Irishmen, 
religion must be left to the Churches whose 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 121 

duty it is to promote it, and be dissevered 
from party politics, and it should be re- 
garded as contrary to national idealism 
to organize men of one religion into secret 
societies with political or economic aims. 
So shall be left to Caesar the realm which 
is Csesar's, and it shall not appear part of 
the politics of eternity that Michael's 
sister's son obtains a particular post be- 
ginning at thirty shillings a week. I am 
not certain that it should not be an es- 
sential condition of any Irish settlement 
that all such sectarian organizations 
should be disbanded in so far as their ob- 
jects are political, and remain solely as 
friendly societies. It is useless assuring 
a minority already suspicious, of the tol- 
erance it may expect from the majority, 
if the party machine of the majority is 
sectarian and semi-secret, if no one of the 
religion of the minority may join it. I 
believe in spite of the recent growth of 



12^ The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

sectarian societies that it has affected but 
little the general tolerant spirit in Ire- 
land, and where evils have appeared they 
have speedily resulted in the break up of 
the organization in the locality. Irish- 
men individually as a rule are much nobler 
in spirit than the political organizations 
they belong to. 

11. It is necessary to speak with the 
utmost frankness and not to slur over any 
real difficulty in the way of a settlement. 
Irish parties must rise above themselves 
if they are to bring about an Irish unity. 
They appear on the surface unreconcil- 
able, but that, in my opinion, is because 
the spokesmen of parties are under the 
illusion that they should never indicate in 
public that they might possibly abate one 
jot of the claims of their party. A 
crowd or organization is often more ex- 
treme than its individual members. I 
have spoken to Unionists and Sinn Feiners 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 123 

and find them as reasonable in privsite as 
they are unreasonable in public. I am 
convinced that an immense relief would be 
felt by all Irishmen if a real settlement of 
the Irish question could be arrived at, a 
compromise which would reconcile them to 
living under one government, and would 
at the same time enable us to live at peace 
with our neighbours. The suggestions 
which follow were the result of discussions 
between a group of Unionists, National- 
ists and Sinn Feiners, and as they found 
it possible to agree upon a compromise it 
is hoped that the policy which harmonized 
their diversities may help to bring about 
a similar result in Ireland. 

12. I may now turn to consider the 
Anglo-Irish problem and to make specific 
suggestions for its solution and the char- 
acter of the government to be established 
in Ireland. The factors are triple. 
There is first the desire many centuries 



124 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

old of Irish nationalists for self-govern- 
ment and the political unity of the peo- 
ple: secondly, there is the problem of the 
Unionists who require that the self-gov- 
erning Ireland they enter shall be friendly 
to the imperial connection, and that their 
religious and economic interests shall be 
safeguarded by real and not merely by 
verbal guarantees; and, thirdly, there is 
the position of Great Britain which re- 
quires, reasonably enough, that any self- 
governing dominion set up alongside it 
shall be friendly to the empire. In this 
matter Great Britain has priority of 
claim to consideration, for it has first pro- 
posed a solution, the Home Rule Act 
which is on the Statute Book, though later 
variants of that have been outlined be- 
cause of the attitude of Unionists in 
North-East Ulster, variants which sug- 
gest the partition of Ireland, the elimina- 
tion of six counties from the area con- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 125 

trolled by the Irish government. This 
Act, or the variants of it offered to Ire- 
land, is the British contribution to the 
settlement of the Anglo-Irish problem. 

13. If it is believed that this scheme, 
or any diminutive of it, will settle the 
Anglo-Irish problem, British statesmen 
and people who trust them are only pre- 
paring for themselves bitter disappoint- 
ment. I believe that nothing less than 
complete self-government has ever been 
the object of Irish Nationalism. How- 
ever ready certain sections have been to 
accept instalments, no Irish political 
leader ever had authority to pledge his 
countrymen to accept a half measure as 
a final settlement of the Irish claim. The 
Home Rule Act, if put into operation to- 
morrow, even if Ulster were cajoled or 
coerced into accepting it, would not be 
regarded by Irish Nationalists as a final 
settlement, no matter what may be said at 



126 The Irkh Home-Rule Convention 

Westminster. Nowhere in Ireland has it 
been accepted as final. Received without 
enthusiasm at first, every year which has 
passed since the Bill was introduced has 
seen the system of self-government formu- 
lated there subjected to more acute and 
hostile criticism: and I believe it would 
be perfectly accurate to say that its pass- 
ing to-morrow would only be the prelimi- 
nary for another agitation, made fiercer by 
the unrest of the world, where revolutions 
and the upsetting of dynasties are in the 
air, and where the claims of nationalities 
no more ancient than the Irish, like the 
Poles, the Finns, and the Arabs, to po- 
litical freedom are admitted by the spokes- 
men of the great powers, Great Britain, 
included, or are already conceded. If 
any partition of Ireland is contemplated, 
this will intensify the bitterness now ex- 
isting. I believe it is to the interest of 
Great Britain to settle the Anglo-Irish 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 127 

dispute. It has been countered in many 
of its policies in America and the Colonies 
by the vengeful feelings of Irish exiles. 
There may yet come a time when the re- 
fusal of the Irish mouse to gnaw at a net 
spread about the lion may bring about the 
downfall of the empire. It cannot be to 
the interest of Great Britain to have on 
its flank some millions of people who, 
whenever Great Britain is engaged in a 
war which threatens its existence, feel a 
thrill running through them, as prisoners 
do hearing the guns sounding closer of an 
army which comes, as they think, to liber- 
ate them. Nations denied essential free- 
dom ever feel like that when the power 
which dominates them is itself in peril. 
Who can doubt but for the creation of 
Dominion Government in South Africa 
that the present war would have found 
the Boers thirsty for revenge, and the 
Home Government incapable of dealing 



128 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

with a distant people who taxed its re- 
sources but a few years previous? I have 
no doubt that if Ireland was granted the 
essential freedom and wholeness in its po- 
litical life it desires, its mood also would 
be turned. I have no feelings of race 
hatred, no exultation in thought of the 
downfall of any race ; but as a close ob- 
server of the mood of millions in Ireland, 
I feel certain that if their claim is not met 
they will brood and scheme and wait to 
strike a blow; though the dream may be 
handed on from them to their children and 
their children's children, yet they will 
hope, sometime, to give the last vengeful 
thrust of enmity at the stricken heart of 
the empire. 

14. Any measure which is not a settle- 
ment, which leaves Ireland still actively 
discontented is a waste of effort, and the 
sooner English statesmen realize the futil- 
ity of half -measures the better. A man 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 129 

who claims a debt he believes is due to him, 
who is offered half of it in payment, is 
not going to be conciliated or be one iota 
more friendly, if he knows that the other 
is able to pay the full amount and it could 
be yielded without detriment to the donor. 
Ireland will never be content with a system 
of self-government which lessens its repre- 
sentation in the Imperial Parliament, and 
still retains for that Parliament control 
over all-important matters like taxation 
and trade policy. Whoever controls 
these controls the character of an Irish 
civilization, and the demand of Ireland is 
not merely for administrative powers, but 
the power to fashion its own national pol- 
icy, and to build up a civilization of its 
own with an economic character in keep- 
ing by self-devised and self-checked ef- 
forts. To misunderstand this is to sup- 
pose there is no such thing as national 
idealism, and that a people will accept sub- 



130 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

stitutes for the principle of nationality, 
whereas the past history of the world and 
present circumstance in Europe is evi- 
dence that nothing is more unconquerable 
and immortal than national feeling, and 
that it emerges from centuries of alien 
government, and is ready at any time to 
flare out in insurrection. At no period in 
Irish history was that sentiment more 
self-conscious than it is to-day. 

15. Nationalist Ireland requires that 
the Home Rule Act should be radically 
changed to give Ireland unfettered con- 
trol over taxation, customs, excise and 
trade policy. These powers are at pres- 
ent denied, and if the Act were in opera- 
tion, Irish people instead of trying to 
make the best of it, would begin at once 
to use whatever powers they had as a 
lever to gain the desired control, and this 
would lead to fresh antagonism and a 
prolonged struggle between the two coun- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 131 

tries, and in this last effort Irish Na- 
tionalists would have the support of that 
wealthy class now Unionist in the three 
southern provinces, and also in Ulster if 
it were included, for they would then de- 
sire as much as Nationalists that, while 
they live in a self-governing Ireland, the 
powers of the Irish Government should be 
such as would enable it to build up Irish 
industries by an Irish trade policy, and 
to impose taxation in a way to suit Irish 
conditions. As the object of British con- 
sent to Irish self-government is to dispose 
of Irish antagonism nothing is to be 
gained by passing measures which will not 
dispose of it. The practically unanimous 
claim of Nationalists as exhibited in the 
press in Ireland is for the status and pow- 
ers of economic control possessed by the 
self-governing dominions. By this alone 
will the causes of friction between the two 
nations be removed, and a real solidarity 



132 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

of interest based on a federal union for 
joint defence of the freedom and well-being 
of the federated communities be possible, 
and I have no doubt it would take place. 
I do not believe that hatreds remain for 
long among people when the causes which 
created them are removed. We have seen 
in Europe and in the dominions the con- 
tinual reversals of feeling which have taken 
place when a sore has been removed. An- 
tagonisms are replaced by alliances. It 
is mercifully true of human nature that it 
prefers to exercise goodwill to hatred when 
it can, and the common sense of the best in 
Ireland would operate, once there was no 
longer interference in our internal affairs, 
to allay and keep in order these turbulent 
elements which exist in every country, but 
which only become a danger to society 
when real grievances based on the viola- 
tion of true principles of government are 
present. 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 133 

16. The Union has failed absolutely to 
conciliate Ireland. Every generation 
there have been rebellions and shootings 
and agitations of a vehement and exhaust- 
ing character carried continually to the 
point of lawlessness before Irish grievances 
could be redressed. A form of govern- 
ment which requires a succession of rebel- 
lions to secure reforms afterwards admit- 
ted to be reasonable cannot be a good form 
of government. These agitations have in- 
flicted grave material and moral injury on 
Ireland. The instability of the political 
system has prejudiced natural economic 
development. Capital will not be invested 
in industries where no one is certain about 
the future. And because the will of the 
people was so passionately set on political 
freedom an atmosphere of suspicion gath- 
ered around public movements which in 
other countries would have been allowed to 
carry on their beneficent work unhindered 



134 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

by any party. Here they were continu- 
ally being forced to declare themselves 
either for or against self-government. The 
long attack on the movement for the or- 
ganization of Irish agriculture was an in- 
stance. Men are elected on public bodies 
not because they are efficient administra- 
tors, but because they can be trusted to 
pass resolutions favouring one party or 
another. This has led to corruption. 
Every conceivable rascality in Ireland has 
hid itself behind the great names of nation 
or empire. The least and the most harm- 
less actions of men engaged in philan- 
thropic or educational work or social re- 
form are scrutinized and criticized so as 
to obstruct good work. If a phrase even 
suggests the possibility of a political par- 
tiality, or tendency to anything which 
might be construed by the most suspicious 
scrutineer to indicate a remote desire to 
use the work done as an argument either 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 135 

for or against self-government, the man 
or movement is never allowed to forget it. 
Public service becomes intolerable and 
often impossible under such conditions, 
and while the struggle continues this also 
will continue to the moral detriment of the 
people. There are only two forms of gov- 
ernment possible. A people may either be 
governed by force or may govern them- 
selves. The dual government of Ireland 
by two houses of Parliament, one in Dub- 
lin and one in London, contemplated in the 
Home Rule Act would be impossible and 
irritating. Whatever may be said for two 
bodies, each with its spheres of influence 
clearly defined, there is nothing to be said 
for two legislatures with concurrent pow- 
ers of legislation and taxation, and with 
members from Ireland retained at West- 
minster to provide some kind of demo- 
cratic excuse for the exercise of powers of 
Irish legislation and taxation by the Par- 



136 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

liament at Westminster. The Irish de- 
mand is that Great Britain shall throw 
upon our shoulders the full weight of re- 
sponsibility for the management of our 
own affairs, so that we can only blame our- 
selves and our political guides and not 
Great Britain if we err in our policies. 

17. I have stated what I believe to be 
sound reasons for the recognition of the 
justice of the Irish demand by Great Brit- 
ain and I now turn to Ulster, and ask it 
whether the unstable condition of things in 
Ireland does not affect it even more than 
Great Britain. If it persists in its pres- 
ent attitude, if it remains out of a self- 
governing Ireland, it will not thereby ex- 
empt itself from political, social and eco- 
nomic trouble. Ireland will regard the six 
Ulster counties as the French have re- 
garded Alsace-Lorraine, whose hopes of re- 
conquest turned Europe into an armed 
camp, with the endless suspicions, secret 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 137 

treaties, military and naval developments, 
the expense of maintaining huge armies, 
and finally the inevitable war. So sure as 
Ulster remains out, so surely will it become 
a focus for nationalist designs. I say 
nothing of the injury to the great whole- 
sale business carried on from its capital 
city throughout the rest of Ireland where 
the inevitable and logical answer of mer- 
chants in the rest of Ireland to requests 
for orders will be : '' You would die rather 
than live in the same political house with 
us. We will die rather than trade with 
you." There will be lamentably and in- 
evitably a fiercer tone between North and 
South. Everything which happens in one 
quarter will be distorted in the other. 
Each will lie about the other. The ma- 
terials will exist more than before for civil 
commotion, and this will be aided by the 
powerful minority of Nationalists in the 
excluded counties working in conjunction 



138 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

with their allies across the border. Noth- 
ing was ever gained in life by hatred; 
nothing good ever came of it or could 
come of it; and the first and most impor- 
tant of all the commandments of the spirit 
that there should be brotherhood between 
men will be deliberately broken to the ruin 
of the spiritual life of Ireland. 

18. So far from Irish Nationalists wish- 
ing to oppress Ulster, I believe that there 
is hardly any demand which could be made, 
even involving democratic injustice to 
themselves, which would not willingly be 
granted if their Ulster compatriots would 
fling their lot in with the rest of Ireland 
and heal the eternal sore. I ask Ulster 
what is there that they could not do as 
efficiently in an Ireland with the status and 
economic power of a self-governing domin- 
ion as they do at present ? Could they not 
build their ships and sell them, manufac- 
ture and export their linens? What do 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 139 

they mean when thej say Ulster industries 
would be taxed? I cannot imagine any 
Irish taxation which their wildest dreams 
imagined so heavy as the taxation which 
they will endure as part of the United 
Kingdom in future. They will be impli- 
cated in all the revolutionary legislation 
made inevitable in Great Britain by the re- 
coil on society of the munition workers and 
disbanded conscripts. Ireland, which 
luckily for itself, has the majority of its 
population economically independent as 
workers on the land, and which, in the de- 
velopment of agriculture now made nec- 
essary as a result of changes in naval war- 
fare, will be able to absorb without much 
trouble its returning workers, Ireland will 
be much quieter, less revolutionary and 
less expensive to govern. I ask what rea- 
son is there to suppose that taxation in a 
self-governing Ireland would be greater 
than in Great Britain after the war, or in 



140 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

what way Ulster industries could be sin- 
gled out, or for what evil purpose by an 
Irish Parliament? It would be only too 
anxious rather to develop still further the 
one great industrial centre in Ireland ; and 
would, it is my firm conviction, allow the 
representatives of Ulster practically to 
dictate the industrial policy of Ireland. 
Has there ever at any time been the 
slightest opposition by any Irish Nation- 
alist to proposals made by Ulster indus- 
trialists which would lend colour to such a 
suspicion? Personally, I think that Ul- 
ster without safeguards of any kind might 
trust its fellow-countrymen; the weight, 
the intelligence, the vigour of character 
of Ulster people in any case would enable 
them to dominate Ireland economically. 

19. But I do not for a moment say that 
Ulster is not justified in demanding safe- 
guards. Its leader, speaking at West- 
minster during one of the debates on the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 141 

Home Rule Bill, said scornfully, " We do 
not fear oppressive legislation. We know 
in fact there would be none. What we do 
fear is oppressive administration." That 
I translate to mean that Ulster fears that 
the policy of the spoils to the victors would 
be adopted, and that jobbery in Nation- 
alist and Catholic interests would be ram- 
pant. There are as many honest Nation- 
alists and Catholics who would object to 
this as there are Protestant Unionists, and 
they would readily accept as part of any 
settlement the proposal that all posts 
which can rightly be filled by competitive 
examination shall only be filled after ex- 
amination by Irish Civil Service Commis- 
sioners, and that this should include all 
posts paid for out of public funds whether 
directly under the Irish Government or 
under County Councils, Urban Councils, 
Corporations, or Boards of Guardians. 
Further, they would allow the Ulster 



142 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Counties through their members a veto on 
any important administrative position 
where the area of the official's operation 
was largely confined to North-East Ul- 
ster, if such posts were of a character 
which could not rightly be filled after ex- 
amination and must needs be a government 
appointment. I have heard the suspicion 
expressed that Gaelic might be made a sub- 
ject compulsory on all candidates, and 
that this would prejudice the chances of 
Ulster candidates desirous of entering the 
Civil Service. Nationalist opinion would 
readily agree that, if marks were given for 
Gaelic, an alternative language, such as 
French or German, should be allowed the 
candidate as a matter of choice and the 
marks given be of equal value. By such 
concession jobbery would be made impos- 
sible. The corruption and bribery now 
prevalent in local government would be a 
thing of the past. Nationalists and Un- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 143 

ionists alike would be assured of honest 
administration and that merit and effi- 
ciency, not membership of some sectarian 
or political association, would lead to pub- 
lic service. 

20. If that would not be regarded as 
adequate protection, Nationalists are 
ready to consider with friendly minds any 
other safeguards proposed either by Ul- 
ster or Southern Unionists, though in my 
opinion the less there are formal and legal 
acknowledgments of differences the better, 
for it is desirable that Protestant and 
Catholic, Unionist and Nationalist, should 
meet and redivide along other lines than 
those of religion or past party politics, 
and it is obvious that the raising of artifi- 
cial barriers might perpetuate the present 
lines of division. A real settlement is im- 
possible without the inclusion of the whole 
province in the Irish State, and apart from 
the passionate sentiment existing in Na- 



144 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

tionalist Ireland for the unity of the whole 
country there are strong economic bonds 
between Ulster and the three provinces. 
Further, the exclusion of all or a large 
part of Ulster would make the excluded 
part too predominantly industrial and the 
rest of Ireland too exclusively agricul- 
tural, tending to prevent that right bal- 
ance between rural and urban industry 
which all nations should aim at and which 
makes for a varied intellectual life, social 
and political wisdom and a healthy na- 
tional being. Though for the sake of 
obliteration of past differences I would 
prefer as little building by legislation of 
fences isolating one section of the commu- 
nity from another, still I am certain that 
if Ulster, as the price of coming into a self- 
governing Ireland, demanded some appli- 
cation of the Swiss Cantonal system to it- 
self which would give it control over local 
administration, it could have it ; or, again 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 145 

it could be conceded the powers of local 
control vested in the provincial govern- 
ments in Canada, where the provincial as- 
semblies have exclusive power to legislate 
for themselves in respect of local works, 
municipal institutions, licences, and ad- 
ministration of justice in the province. 
Further, subject to certain provisions pro- 
tecting the interests of different religious 
bodies, the provincial assemblies have the 
exclusive power to make laws upon educa- 
tion. Would not this give Ulster all the 
guarantees for civil and religious liberty it 
requires? What arguments of theirs, 
what fears have they expressed, which 
would not be met by such control over 
local administration? I would prefer 
that the mind of Ulster should argue its 
points with the whole of Ireland and press 
its ideals upon it without reservation of 
its wisdom for itself. But doubtless if 
Ulster accepted this proposal it would 



146 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

benefit the rest of Ireland by the model it 
would set of efficient administration: and 
it would, I have no doubt, insert in its 
Provincial constitution all the safeguards 
for minorities there which they would ask 
should be inserted in any Irish constitu- 
tion to protect the interest of their co- 
religionists in that part of Ireland where 
they are in a minority. 

21. I can deal only with fundamentals 
in this memorandum because it is upon 
fundamentals there are differences of 
thinking. Once these are settled, it would 
be comparatively easy to devise the neces- 
sary clauses in an Irish constitution, giv- 
ing safeguards to England for the due 
payment of the advances under the Land 
Acts, and the principles upon which an 
Irish contribution should be made to the 
empire for naval and military purposes. 
It was suggested by Mr. Lionel Curtis in 
his Problems of the Commonwealth, that 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 147 

assessors might be appointed by the do- 
minions to fix the fair taxable capacity 
of each for this purpose. It will be ob- 
served that while I have claimed for Ire- 
land the status of a dominion, I have re- 
ferred solely hitherto to the powers of 
control over trade policy, customs, excise, 
taxation and legislation possessed by the 
dominions, and have not claimed for Ire- 
land the right to have an army or a navy 
of its own. I recognize that the proxim- 
ity of the two islands makes it desirable 
to consolidate the naval power under the 
control of the Admiralty. The regular 
army should remain in the same way un- 
der the War Office which would have the 
power of recruiting in Ireland. The Irish 
Parliament would, I have no doubt, be will- 
ing to raise at its own expense under an 
Irish Territorial Council a territorial 
force similar to that of England but not 
removable from Ireland. Military con- 



148 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

scription could never be permitted except 
bj act of the Irish Parliament. It would 
be a denial of the first principle of na- 
tionality if the power of conscripting the 
citizens of the country lay not in the hands 
of the National Parliament but was exer- 
cised by another nation. 

S2. While a self-governing Ireland 
would contribute money to the defence of 
the federated empire, it would not be 
content that that money should be spent 
on dockyards, arsenals, camps, har- 
bours, naval stations, ship-building and 
supplies in Great Britain to the almost 
complete neglect of Ireland as at present. 
A large contribution for such purposes 
spent outside Ireland would be an eco- 
nomic drain if not balanced by counter ex- 
penditure here. This might be effected by 
the training of a portion of the navy and 
army and the Irish regiments of the regu- 
lar army in Ireland and their equipment, 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 149 

clothing, supplies, munitions and rations, 
being obtained through an Irish depart- 
ment. Naval dockyards should be con- 
structed here and a proportion of ships 
built in them. Just as surely as there 
must be a balance between the imports and 
exports of a country, so must there be a 
balance between the revenue raised in a 
nation and the public expenditure on that 
nation. Irish economic depression after 
the Act of Union was due in large meas- 
ure to absentee landlordism and the ex- 
penditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland 
with no proportionate return. This must 
not be expected to continue against Irish 
interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it 
desires, would be willing to defend its free- 
dom and the freedom of other dominions 
in the commonwealth of nations it belonged 
to, but it is not willing to allow millions to 
be raised in Ireland and spent outside Ire- 
land. If three or five millions are raised 



150 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

in Ireland for imperial purposes and spent 
in Great Britain, it simply means that the 
vast employment of labour necessitated 
takes place outside Ireland: whereas if 
spent here, it would mean the employment 
of many thousands of men, the support of 
their families, and in the economic chain 
would follow the support of those who 
cater for them in food, clothing, housing, 
etc. Even with the best will in the world, 
to do its share towards its defence of the 
freedom it had attained, Ireland could not 
permit such an economic drain on its re- 
sources. No country could approve of a 
policy which in its application means the 
emigration of thousands of its people 
every year while it continued. 

23. I believe even if there were no his- 
torical basis for Irish nationalism that 
such claims as I have stated would have 
become inevitable, because the tendency of 
humanity as it develops intellectually and 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 151 

spiritually is to desire more and more free- 
dom, and to substitute more and more an 
internal law for external law or gov- 
ernment, and that the solidarity of empires 
or nations will depend not so much upon 
the close texture of their political organi- 
zation or the uniformity of mind so en- 
gendered as upon the freedom allowed and 
the delight people feel in that freedom. 
The more educated a man is the more it is 
hateful to him to be constrained and the 
more Impossible does it become for central 
governments to provide by regulation for 
the Infinite variety of desires and cultural 
developments which spring up everywhere 
and are in themselves laudable, and In no 
way endanger the state. A recognition of 
this has already led to much decentraliza- 
tion In Great Britain Itself. And if the 
claim for more power in the administration 
of local affairs was so strongly felt In a 
homogeneous country like Great Britain 



15^ The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

that, through its county council system, 
people in districts like Kent or Essex have 
been permitted control over education and 
the purchase of land, and the distribu- 
tion of it to small holders, how much more 
passionately must this desire for self-con- 
trol be felt in Ireland where people have a 
different national character which has sur- 
vived all the educational experiments to 
change them into the likeness of their 
neighbours. The battle which is going on 
in the world has been stated to be a spirit- 
ual conflict between those who desire 
greater freedom for the individual and 
think that the state exists to preserve that 
freedom, and those who believe in the pre- 
dominance of the state and the complete 
subjection of the individual to it and the 
moulding of the individual mind in its im- 
age. This has been stated, and if the first 
view is a declaration of ideals sincerely 
held by Great Britain, it would mean the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 153 

granting to Ireland, a country which has 
expressed its wishes by vaster majorities 
than were ever polled in any other country 
for political changes, the satisfaction of 
its desires. 

S4. The acceptance of the proposals 
here made would mean sacrifices for the 
two extremes in Ireland, and neither party 
has as yet made any real sacrifice to meet 
the other,- but each has gone on its own 
way. I urge upon them that if the sug- 
gestions made here were accepted, both 
would obtain substantially what they de- 
sire, the Ulster Unionists, that safety for 
their interests and provision for Ireland's 
unity with the commonwealth of do- 
minions inside the empire; the Nation- 
alists, that power they desire to create 
an Irish civilization by self-devised and 
self-checked efforts. The brotherhood of 
dominions of which they would form one 
would be inspired as much by the fresh 



154 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

life and wide democratic outlook of 
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa 
and Canada, as by the hoarier polit- 
ical wisdom of Great Britain; and mili- 
tary, naval, foreign and colonial policy 
must in the future be devised by the rep- 
resentatives of those dominions sitting in 
council together with the representatives 
of Great Britain. Does not that indicate 
a different form of imperialism from that 
they hold in no friendly memory? It 
would not be imperialism in the ancient 
sense but a federal union of independent 
nations to protect national liberties, which 
might draw into its union other peoples 
hitherto unconnected with it, and so beget 
a league of nations to make a common in- 
ternational law prevail. The allegiance 
would be to common principles which 
mankind desire and would not permit 
the dominance of any one race. We 
have not only to be good Irishmen 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 155 

but good citizens of the world, and one 
is as important as the other, for earth 
is more and more forcing on its children a 
recognition of their fundamental unity, 
and that all rise and fall and suffer to- 
gether, and that none can escape the infec- 
tion from their common humanity. If 
these ideas emerge from the world conflict 
and are accepted as world morality, it will 
be some compensation for the anguish of 
learning the lesson. We in Ireland like 
the rest of the world must rise above our- 
selves and our differences if we are to man- 
ifest the genius which is in us, and play a 
noble part in world history. 



NOTE 

I was asked to put into shape for pub- 
lication ideas and suggestions for an Irish 
settlement which had been discussed among 
a group whose members represented all ex- 
tremes in Irish opinion. The compromise 
arrived at was embodied in documents writ- 
ten by members of the group privately cir- 
culated, criticized and again amended. I 
make special acknowledgments to Colonel 
Maurice Moore, Mr. James G. Douglas, 
Mr. Edward E. Lysaght, Mr. Joseph 
Johnston, F.T.C.D., Mr. Alec Wilson and 
Mr. Diarmid Coffey. For the spirit, 
method of presentation and general argu- 
ments used, I alone am responsible. And 
if any are offended at what I have said, I 
am to be blamed, not my fellow- workers. 

A. E. 
156 



ADDENDUM 

This pamphlet is a reprint of articles 
which appeared in the Irish Times on the 
26th, 28th and 29th of May. The letters 
which follow appeared in the same paper on 
the SI St of May. 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE IRISH TIMES 

Sir — In an attempt to discover what 
measure of agreement to-day was possible be- 
tween the political antagonists of yesterday, 
the attention of a few dozen Irish men and 
women was drawn to the articles by A. E. 
which have appeared in your columns, and 
the following statement was signed by those 
whose names are appended beneath it: — 

** We, the undersigned, having read 
Thoughts for a Convention by A. E. with- 
out endorsing all his statements, express our 
general agreement with his conclusions and 
157 



158 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

with the argument by which these are 
reached/' 

The signatories include : — 

His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Walsh, Arch- 
bishop of Dublin. 

The Lord Monteagle, K.P. 

Sir John Griffith, M.A.I., M. Inst. C. E. 

Sir Nugent Everard. 

Sir Algernon Coote, Bt. 

Sir J. R. O'Connell, LL.D. 

Sir Henry Grattan Bellew, Bt. 

Lady Gregory. 

Mrs. J. R. Green. 

Douglas Hyde, LL.D., D.Litt., Professor 
Irish National University. 

Edmund Curtis, M.A., Professor Oratory, 
History and English Literature, Dublin 
University. 

T. B. Rudmose Brown, M.A., Professor of 
Romance Languages, University of Dublin. 

Dermod O'Brien, President Royal Hibernian 
Academy. 

Thomas E. Gordon, M.B., F.R.C.S.I. 

Oliver Gogarty, F.R.C.S.I. 

Joseph T. Wigham, M.D. 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 159 

Frank C. Purser, M.D. 
Robert J. Rowlette, M.D. 
Edward Martyn. 
George Gavan Duffy. 
F. J. O'Connor. 
John Mackie, F.C.A. 
John O'Neill. 
John McCann. 
J. Hubbard Clarke, J.P. 
Thomas Butler. 
John Douglas. 
E. A. Stopford. 
James MacNeill. 

Does not this suggest that agreement might 
also be possible in an Irish Convention if, by 
some miracle, Irishmen of various parties 
would step out of their well-fenced enclosures 
to take counsel in common ? — Yours, etc., 
James G. Douglas. 

Dublin, May SOth, 1917. 



160 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

TO THE EDITOR OP THE IRISH TIMES 

Sir — May I express the hope that 
" A. E.'s '* Thoughts for a Convention, the 
last instalment of which you published yes- 
terday, and which I am informed will reap- 
pear as a pamphlet this week, will be 
widely read? I am not thinking of his con- 
clusions, ably reasoned as they are, but of 
the tone and temper in which he handles the 
most explosive material in the whole maga- 
zine of Irish controversy. It is refreshing 
to listen to one who not only has the courage 
of his convictions, but can also say honestly 
that the convictions are his own and not some- 
body else's. 

*' A. E." strikes a note which may go far 
to make the Convention the success the vast 
majority of Irishmen hardly dare to hope 
that it will be. If he speaks only for him- 
self, " More shame for his generation " will 
surely be the verdict of history. 
Yours, etc., 

Horace Plunkett. 

The Plunkett House, Dublin, 
May 30th, 1917. 



A DEFENCE OF THE CONVENTION 

A Speech delivered at Dundalk 
June 25, 1917 

By Seb Horace Plunkett 



** Sinn Fein, Labour and Mr. O'Brien's 
League now stand out. But the Bishops 
have accepted Mr. Lloyd George's invitation, 
and a noble and statesmanlike speech by Sir 
Horace Plunkett — his first on the political 
platform for fifteen years — in favour of the 
Convention should have an eiFect." 

— The New Statesman. 



A DEFENCE OF THE CONVENTION 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen^ 

THIS is the first time in over fifteen 
years that I have stood on a plat- 
form which could be called political, and I 
daresay there are many others here who 
leave party politics severely alone. But 
to-day Ireland, in common with many an- 
other country, is passing through a crisis 
unprecedented in its history, and the call 
has come for men of no party to work to- 
gether with men of all parties in the field 
of politics. For, whether we wish it or 
not, changes are about to be made in our 
system of government which must pro- 
foundly affect us all. These changes are 
to be discussed in a National Convention, 

which the leader of over four-fifths of our 
163 



164« The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Parliamentary representatives has himself 
declared should be composed mainly of 
non-partisan Irishmen. To these latter, 
therefore, I. desire chiefly to speak, as one 
of them, upon our political duty at this 
time. 

THE CONVENTION AND ITS CRITICS 

A great majority of the Irish people 
have already decided that an attempt 
should be made at once in Ireland by Irish- 
men to come to some agreement, and have 
welcomed the plan offered for our accept- 
ance by the Government. But voices are 
heard denying that the Convention gives 
us any real opportunity of attaining the 
end in view. So strongly is this felt that 
a body of opinion, of unknown numerical 
strength but of imquestioned sincerity 
and of great determination, is urging 
upon us a wholly dilBPerent plan. Ireland 
is to appear before the Peace Conference 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 165 

and to demand that her government shall 
be brought into accord with the principles 
for which the Allies profess to be fighting. 
These men who reject, and others who 
accept, the Convention make two objec- 
tions to it: they say, first, that it is not 
in any true sense representative, and sec- 
ondly, that it has no power to get legisla- 
tive effect given to its decision, no matter 
by how large a majority its wishes may be 
declared. The best contribution I can 
make to your deliberations will be to ex- 
amine, briefly, the alternative which has 
been suggested, to answer, as far as I can, 
the two damaging criticisms of the Con- 
vention itself, and then to give my reason 
for holding that we should accept the offer 
of the Government. 

IREIiAND AT THE PEACE CONFEEENCE 

It would not be fair to criticize the 
Peace Conference proposal in its details. 



166 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

because the time has not come to work 
these out ; but it is quite necessary to dis- 
cuss the plan in its broad outlines, since 
it is advocated as a better way than that 
which most of us wish to take. I submit, 
then, that if the Conference were to meet 
to-morrow, Ireland could not be repre- 
sented at it, for the obvious reason that 
there would be no agreement as to who 
were to be her plenipotentiaries. But, if 
this difficulty were surmounted — and in 
an atmosphere which makes it almost im- 
possible to find an Irish Chairman for our 
Convention it is a big " if " — what is it 
that our plenipotentiaries are going to ask 
of the assembled representatives of the 
war-worn nations ? They will have to ad- 
mit that the people of Ireland are not 
unanimous as to the kind of government 
they require. Some prefer the status quo; 
others desire devolution within the United 
Kingdom; a much larger section favour 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 167 

government within the British Common- 
wealth of self-governing nations, but dif- 
fer considerably as to the precise position 
Ireland should occupy in it; and yet an- 
other group desire to make their country 
an independent sovereign State. Worse 
still, there is the Ulster difficulty, which 
three short years ago brought us to the 
verge of civil war. What, again, I ask, 
would our plenipotentiaries at the peace 
conference propose, assuming — and it is 
a large assumption — that the Conference 
admitted them to its councils and did not 
tell them to try first a conference at 
home? Is it likely that the representa- 
tives of the nations, having to discover the 
means to be taken to prevent fur'ther 
attempts to disturb the world's peace and 
the practicable limitations of militarism 
and navalism, having to decide vast ques- 
tions of restitution and reparation, hav- 
ing to allay the fiercest racial antagonisms 



168 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

of the Near East — to mention but a few 
of their problems — will welcome the task 
of settling the Irish question not only in 
its old and well-understood Anglo-Irish 
significance, but in its later development 
of Irish disagreement? How many minor- 
ities is a peace conference to be asked to 
coerce, to say nothing of the coercion of 
Great Britain which any settlement agree- 
able to the advocates of this plan would 
involve? I cannot help feeling that this 
method of settlement, which, no doubt, will 
appeal to the imagination and stir the 
pride of many Irishmen, would provoke 
more violent opposition than any that has 
yet been proposed. So let us turn to the 
Convention, and see whether that bird in 
the hand does not offer a better solution 
than this doubtful bird in a distant bush. 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 169 

THE ALLEGED UNREPRESENTATIVE CHARAC-' 
TER OF THE CONVENTION 

I come now to the main criticism of the 
Convention — its constitution. It is not 
ideally representative — that may be ad- 
mitted at once. It is widely felt that the 
only satisfactory plan would be to let the 
democracy choose its delegates as it 
chooses its Parliamentary representatives. 
But there are several objections to any 
popular election just now. The Parlia- 
mentary register is out of date, and it 
would take a long time to revise it. The 
country is in a state of considerable un- 
rest, which we all hope the Convention will 
allay. In the circumstances, if we were 
to have a hundred fights over the selection 
of the delegates, the birthpangs of the 
Convention might be fatal to the spirit 
in which it can alone succeed. There is 
a very strongly felt objection to having 



ITO The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

any election while a large number of Irish- 
men are fighting abroad. No body of citi- 
zens has a better right to be heard than 
those soldiers, who, apart from other 
claims, are very likely to have gained some 
wide points of view. I fully realize that 
the Sinn Fein group have a grievance in 
the large representation of local govern- 
ment bodies elected before they gained 
their present numerical strength ; but it is 
notorious that the great bulk of that party 
— which rose phoenix-like out of the ashes 
of the rebellion — consists of recent con- 
verts. Has their doctrine failed to com- 
mend itself ta a full proportion of the 
chairman o»f county and county-borough 
councils and to the urban district nominees 
who will be delegates under the Govern- 
ment's plan ? Theirs is not the only griev- 
ance. The Nationalists in the six Ulster 
counties claiming exclusion are also un- 
represented, and other bodies make similar 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 171 

complaints. Of all these I would ask: 
does the basis of representation very much 
matter? Surely the equal balance of par- 
ties is far less important than a com- 
prehensive representation of Irish inter- 
ests, and this is more easily reached by 
nomination than by election. As the Con- 
vention, which, as many have pointed out, 
would be more properly called a Confer- 
ence, is constituted, every considerable sec- 
tion of Irishmen should find in it some com- 
petent advocate of its views. One essen- 
tial point is that, if the Convention agrees 
upon a scheme which does not clearly meet 
with popular favour, it will unquestion- 
ably be submitted by referendum or other- 
wise for popular approval. Lastly, con- 
sider the constructive work the Conven- 
tion has to do. While every delegate will 
be competent to criticize its report, those 
who will have the necessary special knowl- 
edge for drafting a bill will be exceeding 



172 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

few. One Alexander Hamilton would do 
the whole job. No one who knows the way 
such work has to be done would be sur- 
prised either by a good report from a bad 
Convention or a bad report from a good 
Convention. 

THE CASE FOR AN ALL-IRELAND SUPPORT 

The conclusion, then, that I reach is 
that, in times of great difficulty, the Gov- 
ernment have made an honest attempt to 
enable us to settle the political question 
for ourselves. They have striven to bring 
together a body of Irishmen sufficiently 
representing the main currents of Irish 
opinion to bespeak favourable considera- 
tion for decisions as to which they are 
unanimous, and to make a strong case for 
those at which they arrive by a substantial 
majority. It has been suggested, I know, 
that it is nothing more than a clever trick 
to put Ireland in the wrong by proving 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 173 

to the world that, in the words of Lord 
Dufferin's joke at our expense, " the Irish 
don't know what they want, and won't be 
happy till they get it." The suggestion 
comes from those who foster that undying 
hatred of England which, if it does not 
exclude, most assuredly renders barren 
their love for Ireland. To such I would 
say the England of the war is wholly un- 
like any England that has ever been — as 
unlike as is the Lloyd George Government 
from any of its predecessors. It is domi- 
nated by labour. Little time has the Brit- 
ish democracy just now to think of Ire- 
land, but I am convinced it wants to do 
justly by Ireland for its own sake, for 
Ireland's sake, and out of regard to the 
opinion of its Allies, especially America 
and Russia. But, if this view cannot be 
taken by those I am now addressing, I have 
another answer. If they really think 
England is an insidious foe, seeking our de- 



174 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

struction, why, in the name of common 
sense, should they fall into the trap which 
they plainly see when, by simply taking 
counsel together, the Irish have it in their 
power to hoist the enemy with his own 
petard? What, however, concerns us 
here is that the Convention will meet, and 
we wish it Godspeed. Far the best serv- 
ice this meeting can do is to appeal to 
those Irishmen who have determined to re- 
main aloof to reconsider their decision. 

AN APPEAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE REFUSED 
^ CO-OPERATION 

To those of our countrymen upon whose 
willingness to make some sacrifice of in- 
dividual opinions, the full success of the 
Convention will depend, I beg leave to ad- 
dress a few friendly words. Of all the 
abstentions, that of Mr. William O'Brien 
is to me the most pathetic. When I ac- 
cepted the invitation to come here to-day 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 175 

and plead for unity, I had hoped that his 
mantle would fall upon me, but never 
dreamed that he would himself cast it off. 
No man has more consistently stood for 
the coming together of Irishmen to try 
and compose their differences, and at least, 
I looked to him to tell us to make the best 
of a bad Convention. I can well believe in 
the " poignant personal sorrow " with 
which he made his great refusal, and I 
hope he will see in this meeting a direct ap- 
peal to him to reconsider it. He will 
thus render the greatest service of a life 
devoted to Ireland. 

The abstention of the Sinn Femers is, in 
a sense, more regrettable, because they are 
more numerous. In some respects, theirs 
is the most interesting political party in 
Irish history. Most other parties depend 
for their strength upon organization, and 
this is the weakness of Svnn Fein, Its 
strength is in its idealism, the central idea 



176 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

being the concentration of all Irish 
thought and action upon exclusively Irish 
service. That idea, in some of its impli- 
cations, leads, unhappily, to extreme 
courses, but none will question the nobility 
of an aspiration for which many fine young 
Irishmen have laid down their lives. But 
around this central idea seethes every kind 
of discontent, and it seems to me that the 
one thing the cool-headed leaders should 
see their party requires at the moment — 
indeed, the condition precedent of the real- 
ization of any of its aims — is to find 
its place in the national life. This can 
only be done by meeting face to face, un- 
der conditions favourable to frank dis- 
cussion, every section of the community 
to which, in common with every other po- 
litical party, it aspires to commend its 
policy. They, I should have thought, 
would see that the one gleam of hope 
which has in modern times brightened the 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 177 

political prospect in Ireland is the recog- 
nition by England that the settlement of 
the Irish question must come from Ire- 
land — from ourselves alone. They, of 
all Irishmen, should not lightly reject a 
Convention which, whatever its defects, has 
at least the merit of being Irish. 

I regret, too, more than I can say, the 
abstention of labour. Irish policies, ow- 
ing, no doubt, to the domination of the 
land question, have notably disregarded 
the workers of both town and country. In 
a constitutional Convention the voice of 
those who toil and spin, .must be heard. 
Three capable and authorized spokesmen 
would do as well as a hundred. All that 
is wanted is that a watching l>rief should 
be held for labour. 



178 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

Ireland's difficulty, ulster's 
opportunity 

strange as it may seem, the solvent for 
all these discords lies just across the bor- 
ders to the North. So here. North of the 
Boyne, and in sight of the Ulster hills, may 
we not appeal to those Unionists who have 
earned our respect by agreeing to meet 
us, to help the cause of peace and good- 
will in Ireland by listening with an open 
mind to any fresh arguments which may 
be offered to them on this first opportu- 
nity for a free and unfettered inter- 
change of view upon the Irish question? 
Their position in Ireland is to the foreign 
observer the most anomalous. On the 
one hand, they appear as a minority 
claiming to dictate to the majority. I 
dismiss that charge. They do not want 
to interfere with us. They have their own 
version of Sinn Fein — they, too, want to 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 179 

be left to themselves alone. On the other 
hand, they claim, and they rightly claim, 
that they have to their credit certain solid 
achievements, the result of certain solid 
qualities. There is not a thinking Irish- 
man but admits the achievements and re- 
gards the qualities as absolutely indispen- 
sable to any prosperous and progressive 
Ireland in the future. But of all the mis- 
understandings which curse our unhappy 
country, the worst is the conviction among 
these Ulstermen that we of the South and 
West bear them no good will, and that we 
so little understand their industrial and 
commercial activities, that, even with the 
best intentions in the world, we should in- 
evitably embark upon schemes of legisla- 
tion and practise methods of administra- 
tion fatal to their interests. Personally, I 
think we have neglected the duty of trying 
to allay — much that we have done has 
tended to confirm — these fears. 



180 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

For this reason, when the Ulster crisis 
was most acute, I elaborated a plan for 
the temporary inclusion of Ulster in an 
all-Ireland government for an experi- 
mental period, with the right guaranteed 
by all parties to withdraw if, after a fair 
trial, the plan did not work, or at any 
time, if a competent impartial tribunal de- 
cided that serious harm was being done 
to Ulster interests. I thought it most 
auspicious that Nationalist Ireland seemed 
willing to accept the compromise, and that 
fact makes me believe that Ulster Union- 
ists will be astonished at the reception 
they will get in the Convention. There 
they will find an honest and unanimous 
desire not to coerce, but to win, them. 
All the alternative schemes for the future 
government of Ireland will be discussed in 
turn, and discussed in their severely prac- 
tical, as well as in their sentimental, as- 
pects. Unless I am greatly mistaken, par- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 181 

tition in the last analysis may prove to 
be administratively and financially as dis- 
tasteful to the North-East as it is for 
other reasons to the rest of Ireland. And 
in the course of these practical discussions 
I confidently believe that a better under- 
standing of the South by the North will 
inevitably result. It will be seen that our 
hearts and minds are shown at their worst 
in a public life dominated by the grievance 
of its unsettled Question. Other men and 
other methods will prevail in a self-govern- 
ing Ireland if only Ulster will play its 
part. 

The real feeling of Southern Ireland to 
the Northern Proviuce is well expressed 
in the words of a song which I remember 
was very popular some forty years ago, 
called " Strangers Yet." Two whom God 
had joined together were unnaturally kept 
apart. One asks: 



182 The Irish Home-Rule Convention 

" Must it ever more be thus — 
Spirits still impervious ? 
Can we never fairly stand 
Soul to soul, as hand in hand? 
Are the bounds eternal set 
To retain us strangers yet? ** 

If at the Convention Ulster answers 
these questions as the whole world hopes 
she will, she will have saved the country at 
a critical moment, and done herself lasting 
honour which Ireland will never forget. 
The Unionists in three predominantly Na- 
tionalist counties of Ulster throughout the 
South and West, the Nationalists in the 
six Ulster Unionist counties, and to my 
personal knowledge, the people of the 
United States, would all be relieved of not 
unwarranted misgivings. To the Sinn 
Feiners a shining example would be set, 
while the Nationalist Party, who, at any 
rate, have repudiated the idea of coercing 
Ulster, would feel that those strong, de- 



The Irish Home-Rule Convention 183 

termined men had bent down to place a 
wreath on the grave of Willie Redmond, 
who went over the top with a United Ire- 
land as his heart's desire. 



THE END 



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The insurrection in Dublin was the culmination of the 
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social reform, and in political thought. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

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III. Poetry of the Renascence. 

IV. The Drama. 

V. The Novel, Folk-Lore, and Other Prose. 
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